The Veggie Patch Re-imagined

Sourcing Plants and Seeds Part II -Vocabulary TMI

2012-01-27T08:32:00.000-08:00

There are some people who know immediately what kind of seeds they want. It should be heritage, preferably an old, rare variety that if they don't grow, might blink out of existence, and it should be organic. Then there are others who don't really care as long as it will give them reliable yields with fruit that will make their neighbours envious or at least prevent them from looking down their noses at their crazy gardening hobby. Then there are just those that don't know what the heck all the fuss is about. Isn't a seed a seed?

Sure all seeds are seeds. After all if they weren't, we'd call them something else like grains or gerbils. But there are movements afoot and sometimes they are bannered by sleeping baby plant packages.

Organic vs. Treated

A blast from the past: Here's my youngest as a toddler playing with an unnamed soy bean that had been saved for generations on a farm. Given out at a terminator seed protest. I grew it out for years before turning it over to a small living seed bank.

To produce the seeds, you need plants. If these were grown organically, then some standard - this varies from place to place - must have been met. For example, your seeds were not grown with the help of death-icides or chemicals fast food fertilizers. The seed house may be officially certified - see Cottage Gardener - or they may simply state that they are organic because, for example, their land may still be in transition.¹

Some seeds are additionally treated after harvest with fungicides or other chemicals. This will often make them weird colours. Normally it will say on the seed package, but this is a good reason not to eat any seeds not marketed for that purpose. Your own extra seeds make the best sprouts anyhow. Some plants really pump out those seeds too. Yes, I'm talking to you mustard.

Hybrid vs. Open Pollinated

If you are planning on saving your own seed, then it is easiest to start with plants that are open pollinated. This means that the baby plants will be similar to the parent plants. Hybrid seeds are (usually) produced by cross pollinating two distinct, genetically predictable (such as inbred) parent lines. The result is highly uniform but if you were to save seeds from them then the genes get reshuffled and you cannot predict the exact result.² The statement, "you can't know what you'll get" is a bit misleading however as a gardening friend once pointed out. If you grow out seeds from a hybrid pepper plant you will get.... a pepper plant.³

Hybrids are created to produce, among other things, uniform results in size, yield time and to incorporate resistance to negative pressures such as disease or pests. If you want a particular trait in your plants and can't find them in an OP (open pollinated source), you could try growing out some seed saved from hybrid plants. After several generations of selection, you may have a strain that maintains that trait AND is more or less predictable in form from one generation to the next. In other words, you will have de-hybridized the hybrid. This is a common hobby among backyard breeders. The delectable hybrid tomato Sungold has been, or is in the process of being, dehybridized in all sorts of ways. Big Sungold is an example mentioned on Tatiana's Tomatobase.

It will usually say on the seed packet/description that it is a hybrid. Another clue is an F code behind the name. F1 means that it is a first generation hybrid.

Some people believe that certain plants need to be hybrid or they will be dismal failures. Around here, the brassicas such as broccoli and the melons are often touted as flops if they are not F1. I have not found this to be true. Once you know how to grow these plants, both of them are top performers. Keep in mind that I do not run a CSA nor am I a commercial farmer so maybe I have different acceptable margins.

Heritage/Heirloom vs. Traditionally Bred

Some people are allergic to plants that are created any later than 1930. Often very old and perfectly good varieties are in danger of being lost because they are just not grown. It has been argued that very, very old varieties may have been inadvertently selected as extra healthy because people depended on them to survive. The hypothesis goes that families and varieties co-evolved meaning that families/localities growing the best varieties had more reproductively successful children etc... you know the theory. To dis/prove this you would have to do a nutritional analyses on the crops. Keep in mind too that you would have to use the same cultural practices - ways of working the land, growing the crop - as they did under the same climatic and soil conditions to achieve a similar result. That's not to say that heritage varieties aren't worth growing or aren't healthy. I'm just complicating matters.

My eldest threshing some cabbage seed.

Unfortunately, the rarer of these varieties can suffer from one of two effects by being seldomly grown out. They may have lost a lot of genetic diversity as the seed parent pool is quite small especially if they are out-breeders⁴. Alternatively, they may no longer have the traits they did in the past. Maybe the solid orange squash from 1890 now has yellow stripes because of cross breeding with other cultivars. Both these situations call for revitalization. If you have a pet variety, you can grow out lots of it and reselect for the original characteristics (assuming they haven't lost the genes responsible for them) or you can intentionally cross them with something similar to increase their genetic diversity and vigour. Of course by crossing them, you are creating something new but that's okay in my books. In this way, you might get a great crop that maintains the original variety's genes even if the phenotype (form) is slightly different. It's like the heritage variety is hiding out in the new variety. Or you could reselect for something that looks like the original.

I love heritage varieties. There I said it. I didn't want you to think otherwise. I don't worship them but I do really like them and I do like to believe that co-evolution hypothesis if for no other reason than it sounds neat.

But what you ask is the definition of a heritage/heirloom crop? It varies but the internet consensus seems to be that it has been created and maintained in a traditional way for at least 50 years (some use before the end of the second world war as a time limit) though others say at least 100 years old.

Even today, people are breeding plants in traditional ways. Some may be saving all seeds from high and poorer performing plants. This can maintain more genetic diversity as not all plants perform the same from year to year because of variations in pest/disease pressures and weather. That said, you will probably have some plants that produce consistently higher seed yields and therefore self select. Other breeders intentionally cross plants either with a goal in mind like a purple turnip or just to see what will happen. This blogger's fun with cabbage breeding.

These modern reselections, de-hybridzed crops or intentional breeding projects have value! Wild Garden Seeds (a fav of mine) is busy producing disease resistant lettuce in what they call hell's half acre and strawberry spinach with more reliable germination. That sounds as cool as ancient veg. to me.

Wild Collected vs. Raised Local or otherwise

Seeds in catalogues are produced by an assortment of growers. Small companies often grow a lot of their own seed but also may have other people grow a portion of it. The growers may or may not be nearby. If you are looking for locally adapted varieties, inquire. On occasion, seed companies will merely be reselling seeds from other suppliers. Hopefully they are forthright about where they get their wares.

Other seeds, especially of native varieties, are collected in the wild. As best you can, you should be sure that the collectors are doing so in an ethical way - i.e., taking only a few seeds from different populations if they are rare varieties and none from endangered crop populations unless they have permission and are attempting to increase the population. The same holds if you are the collector.

Speaking of seed explorers, I have seen seeds offered from collections made off of a neighbour's interesting tree, a weird looking bean found on vacation at a market, or even a tag along seed that didn't belong in someone's soup mix.

Grex, Mix or Landrace?

Ripe species seeds from Myhrris odorata - no cultivar name - or Sweet Cicely.

It is becoming more popular to sell seed mixes. Often it'll say 'using our special formula' implying a precision mix. This means that they are adding seeds from different batches together. On the other hand a grex is the herd of babies produced by a cross. These are sister and brother plants that don't necessarily all look a like. Extreme Gardener talks chicory greges.

Which brings me to landraces. These are populations of plants that come from a particular locality and show variability. For example, a landrace of soup peas might have different dry colours and growth type but it is traditionally all saved together and used to make soup. Language - being a means of communication - has led to the evolution of the use of this term so that landrace can refer to intentional variability by mass crossing plants. Here is Joseph's definition of an adaptivar landrace and some of the interesting work he does on his farm.

And finally, when growing many herbs or unusual vegetables from seed, there may be no named cultivars at all. This does not mean that there aren't different varieties, so getting a species variety from two different spots may give you plants that vary in dates to maturity, shade tolerance and so on. Even the seeds grown out from one area may vary considerably. Often, there ARE named varieties even if it is just a regional name attached but because it is unusual to us, we clump them all together.

'K - go out and buy some seeds now.

¹ For example, here's some organic regulation standards linked from Canadian Organic Growers.Or you could try and navigate this omafra site.

² So you want an (overly simplistic) example? Okay let's say you have two parent plants. One has the following genes for three traits: aabbcc. The other plant has these complementary genes: AABBCC. Now form 'a' and form 'A' are for the same gene but each parent has two of the same. When you cross these two inbred lines you get uniformly plants that are aAbBcC as the babies each get one gene from each parent. If you were to let these F1s cross and make baby seeds then you would be crossing two plants with the genes: aAbBcC x aAbBcC. The result could be any of the following: aabbcc, AABBCC, or aabBcC, aABBcc, aaBBcc, etc... See? They may be more like one parent or the other and who knows what the parents were like.

Some people claim that all hybrids are produced to be dependent on big-agri crutches like chemical fertilizers. Though the holy grail of capitalism is to create brand dependency, such as GMOs that work with certain pesticides, this is not always the goal. I don't endorse F1s per se but I don't see anything inherently wrong with them especially when they are produced by combining two cross-pollinating OPs together to invigorate a crop. These may or may not be uniform but they also may show the glorified hybrid vigour. My point is you don't need a lab to do it. It can be done in a garden setting and it might be to your benefit depending on the situation. Or it might just be a fun science experiment.

Here is a decent explanation - It also lists a three line system which uses more than two parent line hence the qualifier in my description.

³A plant that is produced by crossing two closely related species could also be called a hybrid. Obviously this is more unpredictable and it is possible to have mules - sterile plants. If the hybrid process used male sterility in one parent line, I suppose it is also possible to pass on this trait to seedlings. My experience so far, however, is that hybrid plants produce F2 babies which produce F3 seeds and so on.

⁴ Outbreeders are plants that require cross pollination of others of their kind to produce healthy, viable offspring. Otherwise, they suffer from inbreeding depression meaning decreased fitness and fertility. They are normally wind or insect pollinated. Examples are cabbages or corn. This contrasts with inbreeders that are often self pollinating and need smaller populations of parent plants to produce healthy offspring. More on the subject.

Dandelion to the Rescue Harvest Monday

2012-01-23T10:19:00.000-08:00

This fall, among the beets, parsnips and carrots, I dug out of the ground, I also collected dandelion roots. They were stored in fall leaves in a pot in our cellar. About a month ago, I started taking them out to force.

Some were potted in moistened soil and left to grow in the near dark of the furnace room. A small window makes for soft green rather than yellow leaves. After harvesting these milder dandelion greens, they were moved upstairs to the kitchen window where within days they became deep green and prepared to flower! Can't wait to see those sunshine yellow blooms.

These dandelion and chicory roots were soaked in water for a few hours than place in a freezer bag in the vegetable drawer of our fridge to sprout as mentioned in Salad Leaves for All Seasons by Dowding.

I particularly like eating bitters in deep winter as a vitamin and mineral rich tonic.

***

You've heard it before and I'll say it again: many weeds are good for you and the queen of them all is arguably the Taraxacum officinale. It is hardy, doesn't take much room and requires even less care, pretty if you can get past the reflex to eject it from the earth and useful. Roots can be roasted, leaves used in all manner of recipe calling for 'greens' and petals can give their delicate flavour to baked goods or even wine. If you find dandelion greens too bitter then concentrate on eating new growth in the spring or blanch like you might endive by placing a plate over the crown. You can also harvest them in the fall to use in the winter!

There are various species of dandelions including red leaved, pink or white flowered too. In places where dandelion is grown as a green more commonly, there are some that have been selected for juicy hearts or thicker leaves such as Ameliore a Coeur Plein and Vert de Montmagny but the common weed is wonderful enough. Instead of pulling out every dandelion you see, give a few some extra love and experiment in the kitchen with this edible perennial.

***

More Dandelion ideas at Floridata - Never heard of Cramaillotte before.

I just had to include this recipe as the pictures are great: Dandelion Flower Fritters

Sourcing Plants and SeedsPart III - Plants for a headstart

2012-01-11T07:11:00.000-08:00

You want to buy that cool pear-sorbus hybrid or that nifty variegated form of sorrel, prepare to be frustrated. Though there are lots of plants for the buying in Canada, many google searches will leave you slavering over the unattainable (or quite difficult to attain) plants in the US or Europe. Your next step, if you are me, is to try and find seeds of same variety but as many unusual forms of plants don't come true from seed, that might be a either a lost cause or a long venture. Of course, you could import some plants from the states using a phytosanitary certificate but I always felt too bogged down in the mire of expense and paperwork to try it.

As this is primarily an edible plant blog, I'm going to focus on plant mail-order houses with edible entries, but there are a list of nurseries in the area that may have what you're looking for or MAYBE will order them in. I say maybe because I've submitted various requests that were filed under 'not in our lifetime.'

This will NOT be a complete list 'cause I don't spend all day on the internet. Feel free to contribute your brain power and free time to the project by recommending others.

Mail-order Edible Plants in Canada:

Acorus Restoration: Native plants, many edible. Generally listed as mail-order

Alberta Nurseries: Hardy tart/sweet cherries and other small fruits. Not a huge selection.

Alcla Native Plants: Some edibles most notably ground plum - Astralgalus crassicarpus which I normally only see as seeds such as from Prairie Moon Nursery (US native seed and plant source)

Bamboo World: I have not researched which would be good to eat but if you have the right zone, then here's a source.

Beaver Pond Estates: Seed garlic - link takes you to seeds of diversity page for email

Boughen Nurseries: Fruit trees and plants including U of Saskatchewan Cherries and cultivars of Seabuckthorn.

Boundry Garlic - Lots 'o garlic.

Clear Sky Farm: Heritage Garlic Varieties.

Cornhill Nursery: Small fruits, including a good selection of grapes for mail-order.

Denman Island Heritage Apples: The name says it all, includes cider apples

Eagle Creek Farms: Lots of potatoes. Years ago, I ordered from them with very good results.

Fraiser Thimble Farms: Has some edible listings

Golden Acres Farm: Seed Garlic. No direct link to website so linked to Seeds of Diversity info

Golden Bough Nursery: Sells Red Mulberry, American Plum, grapes, some other rare fruits and nuts

Green Barn Nursery: Odd naming practices such as using the term apple-pear for an asian pear, and using the heading cranberry for high bush cranberries. Nursery stock is interesting but expensive: crosses between cherries and plums and a cross between an apricot and plum, mulberries, nuts and more.

Grimo Nut Nursery: All sorts of interesting things from paw-paw, quince, north hardy nuts to mulberries. My trees arrived in a good condition and grew well so far.

Hardy Fruit Trees: Doesn't the first picture make you wondering if he's peeing on his plants? At any rate, good selection.

Hawfield Farm Garlic: Garlic farms don't seem to like to have websites so I'm pretty sure this is the right one.

Henry Fields Seed & Nursery: Small berries, trees and some veggie starts

Heritage Harvest Seed: Perennial walking and potato onions.

Hortico: Fruit trees and plants along with lots of other perennials and woodies.

Humber Nursery - Fruit and Nut trees available - not clear if plants are shipped

La ferme tourne-sol: Jersusalem Artichoke and chuffa

Maddog Farm: Just discovered this one (Thanks Mike!) Large selection of Jerusalem Artichokes, potatoes and sweet potatoes. Also sells crosnes (Stachys affinis). Also sells honey bees.

Mapple Farms: My original source of sweet potatoes and crosnes. They also sell the Volga2 variety of Jerusalem Artichoke. Mr. Allan's plants have always grown well for me.

McFayden: Various small fruits and some fruit trees

Mr V's: Good selection of fruits including cherry-plums. Said to be expensive compared to others.

Mycopatch: Mushrooms - navigating this site is not easy.

Pine needle farm: Tree nursery

Rhora's Nut Farm: I've not ordered from them before but they offer some unusual nut and fruit trees that are hard to come by like cornelian cherry and beach plum. My only complaint is that they sell inoculant for their different plant categories.

Richters: Venerable herb house of Canada with lots of offerings including some fruit trees and vegetable starts. Prices are reasonable and though the size of the plants are small when they arrive, they grow well in my experience. Lots of seeds too.

Saskgarlic: You guessed it.

Seeds of Diversity: Last time I received their trade catalogue, there were cuttings available

Silver Creek Nursery: Reliance peach, asian pears and more

Siloam Orchards: These guys come up as a mail-order house though I couldn't discover how to order. Mostly apple varieties but also asian pears, cherries and more. They sell perry pears too which I have just discovered are pears selected for cider production.

Strawberry Time: Mostly strawberry and raspberries, good prices.

T&T Seeds: Interesting plant selection from hardy kiwis to Saskatoon berries.

The Cutting Veg: More garlic!

The Mushroom Patch: Large selection of kits and plugs. I can't tell you how my plugs did yet as they were started just last year.

William Dam Seeds: The usual: asparagus, raspberries, strawberries, potatoes and so on.

Other:

Some specialty or collector perennials, such as daylilies, are also edible but slogging through those numerous websites is making me woozy. For what it's worth, it's normally easier finding seeds of interesting species of popular edibles such as citron daylily and red-leafed dandelion.

Also, conservation societies can be a good place to get inexpensive tree seedlings for reforesting. Ferguson Forest Centre is nearby. Try native nurseries and sales too for plants such as edible fiddleheads.

* It was supposed to be definition day but I decided to do Part II next week as I have an eye on getting some more trees this week :)

** They also sell bloody dock, various shallots, garlic, walking onions, lovage, various hops, more mint than anyone should plant and lots and lots of herbs many of them with culinary uses.

Part I - Seedy Dreams

Coming up next week:

Part II - Not all Seeds are created equal from hybrid, heirloom, landrace, GMO, species, GREXes and more.

Harvest Monday - Checking the cellar

2012-01-09T07:46:00.000-08:00

Story of Supper II - Checking the cellar

Condensed growing adventures

Winter and summer squash are stored here along with citron - a hard rind watermelon. White scallop summer squash left to ripen fully and harden has stored well so far and still have the a summer squash texture and flavour. I see a slightly wrinkly butternut which probably didn't fully ripen before I took them in but it will still taste delicious in summer. Also shown here is one cob of decorative flint type corn and a couple potatoes that I rescued from the freezing garage still looking fresh as daisies but sprouting. Not sure what to do with these.

When we first moved back to the land of snow and ice from the land of green and grey - Canada from England - I had grown accustomed to having herbs all year long what with the sturdy rosemary hedges and bay laurel the size of small trees. Eliot Coleman and friends told me it could be done by season extension and proper storage. I put up a cold frame and scoured the seed catalogues for mention of terms like storage varieties or long keepers.

Parsnips stored in fall leaves as an experiment. The roots are still very firm with a bit of sprouting.

This last year I didn't have time to set up a polytunnel or dig my dream root cellar in the side of the hill but our new house did come with a storage room in the basement probably meant for canning jars or wine (something the previous owner liked to make). It is now filled with last year's pick of pumpkins, roots packed in fall leaves and a few in dirt.

Swiss chard roots planted to force leaves in the winter. I should probably move this to a sunny spot so that the leaves get more colour and so the plants don't exhaust themselves too quickly.

I went down to the cellar to see how things were doing and to eat things that won't last too much longer. One butternut is begging to become pie and roasted seeds, the chicory roots are drying out a bit too much in the leaves. I think it would be better if they were kept in dirt or sand. The smaller beets were getting a bit dry in the leaves but not the large, well grown ones. Carrots of all size were beautiful looking, no need to eat them quite yet. Parsnips too will wait for a February dinner. Celariac was quite small and shrivelling but as they are planted in dirt, I think I will bring them upstairs to grow in a sunny window. For some reason the daikon radishes are melting but the turnips are doing well. Perhaps the daikon radish have a disease or pest issue.

This is the way I have always stored roots before, in dirt, from the garden. My dirt has always been the well draining sandy type. I wouldn't try it with clay. Here's a sun choke from the top of the pot.

The cool and damp of the cellar seem to keeping the Jerusalem artichokes just fine, even the last cabbage not in my freezer is doing well.

Check out the San Michele x Red Rock Mammoth F1 - it's a survivor, making some roots where the stem was cut. I have a mind to cut back the leaves from the stem and plant this beauty.

One of the great things about growing your own food is it takes some of the choice out of what's for supper. We are having some lentil and pumpkin patties with a nice beet salad. Those drying chicory roots will be soaked in water than placed in plastic bags in the fridge to see if I can force them still. That will make up the bulk of a meal soon to come.

Fruit big and small: Citron and ground cherries. Kept in their husks, ground cherries and tomatillos keep a very long time. Citron, the first time I've grown it, seems to be doing well too. I should do a cutting open experiment soon.

Other things: Canna, glads, dahlias are all firm while the cardoon could use a bit of freshening up. Sweet potatoes are being kept separately in the warm, furnace room and are getting tastier every day. Apples are mellowing if not rotting so I think I'm going to take the ones that are spoiling and make some apple butter today.

Sourcing Plants and SeedPart 1 - Seedy dreams

2012-01-05T10:00:00.000-08:00

Samples of all the types of beans I saved from my garden this year, painstakingly arranged for what purpose I am not sure... we'll say to go with the dream theme cause I certainly didn't have THAT much time to waste.

It's the time of year we start to dream. Just like when we are snuggled in our beds, our dreams can be strange, disjointed, wild, frightening or just impossible. We scour seed catalogues, websites, our own stock and lust whilst planning for next year's (im)perfect garden. It's one of my favourite gardening activities!

Where can I get my seed?

The Establishment

The first place you'll notice seeds is a rack at a grocery or hardware store. Unless you are lucky, these will likely be from one of the big seed houses like Mckenzie. The selection, at first, might seem exciting but as you go from store to store, you'll feel the deja-vu of global capitalism's so-called choice. This even plays out across small seed companies as well but to a much lesser extent. Plant nurseries (Richmond Nursery sells OSC seeds and Make it Green sells Seeds of Change), Seed and Feed stores, even health food stores (Rainbow Foods sells Eternal Seeds if I remember correctly) or other places where hipsters* and garden fanatics hang out often sell seeds too.

The Wild Wild Web

Much greater choice can be had by exploring the many small seed houses from those aimed at hybrid-friendly agri-complient customers to those in the heirloom/native or bust camp. There's something for everyone and lots in between. Try Seed of Diversity's diverse web listing of places to buy seeds. The problem is that you may want a dash of this and a dab of that from a bunch of different places which can add up to big shipping costs.

You don't have to stay in country, though locally produced seeds have a better chance of being adapted to local conditions, pests, weather and gardening practices. Though I've gone no further afield than Europe and the US, Canada is pretty lenient about admitting seeds into the country. Just remember to check the currency conversion so there are no surprises in price.

Seedy Celebration

Better yet, you can wait (if you can wait) for a Seedy Saturday/Sunday festival where lots of small seed houses will be gathered in one spot to sell their wares. This is great for most seeds but not for ones with exacting germination requirements such as those that are best sown fresh in the fall or that need to be planted indoors before February / March which are the most common dates for seedy days. They also mostly cater to the kitchen garden crowd.

Not all big business

Just like crocheted dollies and ideas, individuals sell seeds on the internet. I've gotten some really nice plants this way but it can be a gamble as I have also gotten duds. Dave's Garden has a feedback facility so you can rate your interaction with companies including one (wo)man operations as does ebay of course. For example, I've had good success with seeds and plants from Yuko's Open Pollinated Seed and Casey's Heirloom Tomatoes.

It's a mission

Some seed savers are in the business of preserving seed strains, such as heritage, or otherwise interesting species, cultivars and so on. They often belong to a seed saving organization through which you can get seeds. Seeds of Diversity is one of these as is the Seed Saver's Exchange in the U.S. Here in Canada, Salt Spring Seeds also has their own Seed Sanctuary.

Swap Meet and Round Robin

Of course in the seed world, there is more than one currency. You can trade seeds for seeds. Seedy Saturday usually has a swap table. Plant forums such as Garden Web often have trade sections. If you hang around plantophiles for long enough, you'll notice they are mostly a generous sort. So much so, that the mere mention of a plant can act like a magical incantation as those very seeds end up in my mailbox (thank you everyone!!). On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are scammers too looking to get free seeds for 'charities' only to resell them or that promise a trade but never deliver. Thankfully I've almost never encountered this.

Plantcycles, horticultural societies and the like often have swaps or round robins. I've never done the latter so I refer you to this definition.

Seed Trading Etiquette

There are often rules for different clubs or organizations but here's my take:

1. Packaging: Use something that is easy to open and close but that will not spill and write on it as much info as you can such as the common name, botanical latin name (I really must remember to do this), seed source, year seed was saved, any problems with seed such as low germination or special germination requirements.

2. For your own seed, make sure people know what they're getting: If it is an outbreeder, did you isolate it or could it have crossed with another plant, cultivar or weed? Was the parent population low? Remember that there are distance requirements between different cultivars of inbreeders too but these are less likely to be adhered to by backyard seed savers. Also, some inbreeders such as beans can be crossed by insects in certain areas.

3. Disease and pest issues: If you have an important seed born disease then it is probably best to keep it for your own use but at any rate, you should inform the recipient. There are some standard precautions taken for certain vegetables such as fermenting/bleach treating tomato seeds or freezing dry bean seeds to kill weevils if they are a problem for you. Also, be careful to remove all pests and weed seeds from your seeds. This is a good reason to remove chaff.

4. Storage requirements: Some seeds germinate MUCH better if they do NOT dry out after collection and so could be shipped moist packed. These are typically those that are best sown fresh. For examples, see Gardens North's catalogue. I can't think of any examples of this requirement for common vegetables though. Others may be easily crushed like sunflower or cabbage seeds so should be packed in bubble wrap.

5. Amount of seeds: This will vary on the type of plant, the rarity and how much you have. If you are planning to give far fewer seeds than normal, make sure the recipient knows. Also most people don't want to grow 50 tomato plants of the same variety so 10-20 seeds is plenty but they could easily sow 50 peas.

6. Postage: Normally if you are trading something more or less equivalent then no postage changes hands but otherwise, it is customary to offer. I never ask figuring all that paid postage can go into my karma bank.

That's not all

There are genetic databases, grocery stores and markets, gardens, the wilds and more but I'll tackle those subjects in different posts. P.S. As sourcing is my obsession this time of year, I thought I'd make it my winter posting theme.

Part II coming up next week: Not all seeds are created equal from hybrid, heirloom, landrace, GMO, species, GREXes and more.

* Not just for geeks, agrarians and grandparents anymore. Gardening is trending right now, especially edible gardening. Food is a big topic for good reason I'd argue. And I like the sudden influx of company. It was lonely way back when people's eyes used to glaze over when I started talking plants. Wait, they still do sometimes... At any rate, it's a garden party!

***

Previous Seedy Saturdays in Ottawa

Blogger's Seed Network hosted by Bifucated Carrot

Harvest Monday - Jeruselum Artichokes

2012-01-02T09:36:00.001-08:00

For a 2012 change, my Harvest Monday posts are being dressed up as the Story of Supper.

Story of Supper 1 - Leftovers

condensed food growing adventures

Lunch - the sweets used were a white fleshed variety.

We had people over for New Year's dinner but cooked way too much even for a day of excess. So today, I used what was leftover from one of our kid friendly options - rice with peas and grated sweet potato - and fried it up with some sliced Jeruselum artichokes and onion with kale chips sprinkled on top. Other than the rice, all the rest are easily grown in the Ottawa area. Quinoa, polenta (made from ground corn) or even wild rice would make a nice substitute for the rice in this dish and are also easily grown. If you are interested in going beyond fresh summer eats, there is a movement underfoot to grow grains in the city such as in Lawns to Loaves.

This story begins when I first learned that there were perennial vegetables.* Talk about a paradigm shift! I could have vegetables that were as easy to grow as my herb garden? I started to gather as many as possible including all the classics like horseradish, rhubarb and Jerusalem Artichoke. A friend had brought me some sunchokes for planting from a farmer's market. They grew and grew and grew. My neighbour referred to them as the Jack-in-the-beanstalk plant. After reaching 12ft, they threw out some comically small in comparison yellow sunflowers. After frost, I felt like a kid unearthing the palm sized crunchy tubers from the soil. When we moved here, I brought some descendants of that original variety and have added some other types including one with red skins.

The next chapter happened last fall when I tossed some mixed kale seeds on the cool, wet ground expecting them to sprout in the spring as I usually do of plants that successfully self sow. Late in winter, I seeded long day, storage onions in a flat and in spring my kids dropped shelling peas into a shallow trench. The onions were transplanted in another trench that was carefully tended throughout the season to produce the best growth. Sweet potato tubers that had been placed in warm water in a sunny window had grown slips that were planted as soon as summer had set in which is about the time that the early peas were ready - around the beginning of June. In my family, it is challenging to grow enough peas to freeze because those sweet treats are mostly shelled and devoured while standing over the vines.

By late summer, the kale was in full swing so freshly washed, dried and salted leaves were placed in a dehydrator to make addictive kale chips. Onions had also bulked up so were picked to cure and then their dried leaves were braided to be hung in a cool, dry place. The ground beneath the sweet potatoes was beginning to heave. Before first frost, I carefully pitch forked the soil. The kids collected the sizeable treasures to cure at high heat and humidity for a week or so before being stored at room temperature to continue to deepen in flavour. Frost does not harm the tubers of the Jerusalem artichoke however but improves it. I waited until the ground threatened to freeze solid before digging up the bed, putting up the harvest in pots of dirt that will be stored in the cold cellar.

A few months later, it is all ready for use: the peas are defrosted, the sweet potato and Jerusalem artichoke peeled and sliced, the onion torn from the braid to be caramelized. All fried up with cooked rice and topped with crumbled, dry kale leaves.

* For the interested, please see Plants for a Future (cross check info as there are some errors especially in hardiness zones), Perennial Vegetables by Toensmeier (available at the Ottawa library), or just put terms like culinary herbs, useful wild plants, edible native plants, permaculture plants, or self sowing vegetables into a search engine.

The Sunchoke - Helianthus tuberosus

Sunchokes taken from storage in a pot of dirt in our cellar.

These perennial tuber making members of the sunflower family store their sugars in a form called inulin that can cause gas in some people. Our family does not seem to be affected (thankfully). Inulin is also the culprit in bean's reputation. They are so easy to grow that some people call them invasive though I haven't heard of them seeding themselves this far north so they are more contained. They are sometimes recommended as a warm season screen as they can grow impressively tall - some of mine in my old house were 12 feet tall - but will lodge in a wind storm. As with any self reliant plant, exercising a little control will make them manageable. Put them in a place where they won't be a nuisance or affect the growth of other plants. As they are sunflowers they may cause an allopathic reaction in other plants though I haven't noticed this.

Dig out the patch in the fall after some frost and store in moist sand in a cellar or soil. Their thin skins lose moisture quickly so they may not store as long as some other roots in less than ideal conditions. You can choose to amend the soil then with some compost or well rotted manure and replant some nice looking tubers but I often find that some tubers, or pieces at any rate, will escape your attention restarting the patch again next year. You can leave some in the ground to harvest until the ground freezes and before they start to grow again in the spring.

I've also recently learned that the blanched shoots are quite tasty. You can leave on the skin, just scrub the tubers. To make this easier, knock off the knobs** that may be hiding the dirt and scrub those separately or you can peel the skin. You can use them in similar ways to potatoes but they're flavour, though pleasant in my opinion, is more overwhelming. Raw, they have a crisp, juicy texture and are nice in salad. They can be baked but quickly turn mushy - still tasty though. You can also add them to soups, sauces or fry them. I find they pair really well with seafood.

** In my last residence, the tubers of my variety were quite smooth mostly with few knobbly bits. The ground was quite friable and fertile. Here it is also sandy but less fertile. The plants did not grow as long and the tubers were significantly more knobbly. I'm curious to see if this changes as more organic matter is reincorporated into the soil.

Winter Solstice - Light in the Garden

2011-12-21T09:50:00.000-08:00

In honour of the days getting longer and the promise of glorious growing ahead, a post on light.

For most veggie growers, light is a big preoccupation. Do you have enough in that hidden corner of the yard that has been given the utilitrian task of raising edibles? Is it the right kind? Is it morally wrong to curse the beautiful shade tree that overhangs most of your yard?

The Canopy

My answers would be why are you hiding your edibles? Yes, you can grow edibles in most sun conditions but they might not be tomatoes - See Edibles for Shade. Trees have surprising benefits, especially if they are located to the north of the garden.

Deciduous trees provide a thick layer of mulch every fall enriched by nutrients their roots have liberated from the subsoil. Members of the walnut family can cause poor growth in many plants but there are those that are resistant to jugalone such as both black raspberry (grows under our 100 tree grove of Black Walnuts) and black elderberry - some others to try. Hopefully you'll be getting edible nuts from the tree too.

Some, like Norway maple in my experience, can create dry, poor soil with their thick mat of feeder roots under and beyond their dripline. If you are going to grow a garden at the base of a tree that lets a good amount of light under its canopy but has poor growth and dry soil under it, think hardy plants like violets (viola odorata: leaves edible in spring, flowers edible) and hostas (young shoots edible) and keep it continually mulched. Over the years, you can probably incorporate more delicate plants as the soil becomes rich. We currently have a 13 acre maple bush on our property covered variously filled with an understory of spring ephemerals like dog's tooth violet (edible but as I understand it a starvation food) and hepatica followed by woodland grasses in sunnier spots and various others like native sweet cicely.

To increase light, you can limb up a tree by cutting off the lowest branches. Do so sparingly not only for the tree but also for your own enjoyement. We had a huge specimen of a Little Leaf Linden in our old front yard (Linden leaves are edible in the spring and their flowers are used to make a honey scented tea though use sparingly as they have medicinal affects) with branches that bowed to the ground. Cutting up on one side made an entrance into an enchanted space filled with bulbs in the spring.

Evergreen trees will create a thick weed/lawn supressent mulch beneath them but they provide year round shelter from the blowing winds and snow. Use these acidifying needles to enrich a bed of blueberries and plants that require a low soil pH. Their branches can also be used to shelter tender plants like some roses (petals are useful and rugged rugosa produces choice hips) and overwintering cabbages.

All trees moderate the climate. Their leaves shed water by transpiration and their structure breaks up howling winds. One interesting affect I've noticed in the spring is that their roots act like heating cables under the soil melting away the snow. Conversly, an area sheltered by trees like where I live now holds onto its insulating snow longer in the winter than the surrounding open farm fields keeping heavy frosts out of the soil and off the dormant plants. In combination, trees mean that the snow melts at a time more auspicious for the understory.

Light's faces

Light dances from Easterly to Westerly across the buildings lighting up nooks and crannies throughout the day. Your house might not neatly line up with the four cardinal directions but the sun will play across its angles in a predictable way throughout the day and across the seasons.

East facing gardens soak up the morning sun, drying morning dew quickly which might help thwart fungal disease. They can be beautifully planted with morning blooming flowers like morning glory. Lots of bolting greens like coriander and asian greens can benefit from shade during the hottest part of the day.

West facing gardens get the hot afternoon sun. Though they are considered less valuable as places for growing vegetables if you have to choose, I had a thriving sunset garden full of currants, jeruselum artichokes, walking onions, daylilies, bellflowers, rhubarb, garlic chives, and much more.

South facing gardens are the goal of most of us northerners. Assuming there are no barriers, they get the most sunlight so are best for the real heat hogs like eggplants, peppers, and sweet potatoes. Because the angle of sunlight in the northern hemisphere tilts toward the south in the winter, such a garden gets the most sun all year round. This can mean fluctuating temperatures which can be determinental to plants if the ground freezes and thaws causing heaving of roots and cracking of trunks. Fruit trees or other flowering / fruiting plants may suffer losses from early flowering followed by late frosts.

If you have south facing garden, why not go all out and create a xeriscape filled with north hardy cacti like prickly pear and dryland flowers like poppy mallow. You could incorporate stone pathes or stone mulch or just place smooth rocks decoratively around. On nice spring days, it will be a place to soak up the sun but you may want to avoid it on the hottest days of the year. See drought tolerant plants for the north.* Alternatively, ring with friendly shrubs to cool it down a bit and plant a tropical inspired garden with cannas (I've heard that at least some have edible tubers - something to explore at a later date) and cardoon (very decorative and edible leaf petioles) for the summer.

North facing gardens are often considered the bane of gardeners with their dark, damp aspect. These will receive the least sun theoretically but they do have their uses. There are plethora of beautiful shade and woodland plants. For choosing edible varieties, look through native edible plant guides. If you live in a place with dry soil like I do, then they are often filled with luscious green growth in areas outside of the deepest shade. Of course in near full shade, these can be ideal spots for growing mushrooms.

Slopes: All the above also applies to slopes only more so. A slope to the south will amplify heat creating a microclimate that behaves as if it is several zones south especially if planted above frost pockets. Similiarly, northern slopes will be slow to warm in the spring.

Boundaries

Just because the sun shines does not mean that it hits the ground. The Urban Forest is filled with not only trees but parking garages, apartment buildings and parked trucks. These light impenetrible barriers are not the same as the shifting light of the deciduous forest but rather create continuous shade. One advantage to these barriers is that they can create sheltered spots. In the eastern side of the house, it can block the predominantly westerly winds or on the southern side of the house, the northern winds are thwarted. Use these sheltered spots to put plants that would have questionable survival if left out in the drying winds or that are pushing zones. The heat of the house will also help keep the ground from freezing as deep. In fact, think of the urban forest as filled with these pockets of insulating hot air.

The most difficult spots can be treated like a north facing garden or the deep forest. Grow hostas (spring shoots are edible) and ferns (ostrich and cinnamon produce edible fiddleheads). Think of it as a glade of rich foliage. Also, try some greens, I had luck with parsley, chives and others in a garden against a north wall. You can paint the wall white to increase the reflected light. Water too can be a useful reflective surface.

Winter's Sun

I'm not sure if it is just me but I find references to creating a winter garden amusing. Images of ice scuptured into flowers come to mind though it is meant to invoke pictures of evergreen foliage and grasses sparkling with frost. The amount of snow we normally get makes a 'winter' garden in the normal sense a little less likely though I did see one straight faced reference to using shadow such as the uniform slats of a picket fence to 'decorate' a snowy garden.

Near the winter solstice, the sun traces its most southerly path. If you are putting in a new garden, know that where the sun falls now may not be where it falls in the height of summer. Imagine an arch across the sky and raise that toward the top to get a sense of where it is more likely to hit during summer. Not only that but shadows are longer in the winter than they are in the summer by many times.

When placing a polytunnel for the winter season, this might be to your advantage. In my old place, the greenhouse was placed beneath a tree to the north of the garden. In the winter, the tree's shadow was behind the greenhouse so it was in full sun whereas in the summer, that area was in dappled shade. I started greens in that moist place which grew to fruition in the full sun of fall and early spring. Having a shaded greenhouse in summer might be useful if your summers are very warm as they can be here so that the plants inside don't overheat (you should always have a way to vent your season extension buildings) but in cloudy cool zones such as near the coast where many heat loving crops like melons are grown 'under glass' you will want to choice something without shadow.

Gardens around here do suffer from being a sorry sight in the months of November before the snow falls and in the long spring after the snow melts sometime in late March until the plants really get going in May. Your salvation in the late fall could be grasses or other plants with decorative seedheads, and evergreens like juniper. Vegetables that come into their own this season are the brassicas such as brussel sprouts, cabbage and asian greens like mustards and some alliums like leeks, especially purple leafed varities. Some flowers like violas and calendula can add colour. Early spring is a time for early risers. Nothing lifts the spirits like the appearance of green spikes from the walking onion, tulips and trilliums (edible shoots but why would you eat such pretty things?)

Summer's Rays

The fact that our summers start with long days which shorten after the summer solstice around June 21st is significant for what we can grow. This day length difference is more dramatic the further north you go. Many plants use the changing daylength to coordinate their flowering and fruitig. When you get a plant from a different region that doesn't flower until days are short, you may not get many days to enjoy their flower and you can forget about fruit or seeds.

You'll notice that some fruits like strawberries and raspberries will be spring bearing, double bearing in the spring and fall or 'day nuetral' or everbearing. Onions too must be selected for their sun preference. In the north, we want long day onions whereas in the south they use short day varieties. In fact, if you can, find out what latitude the onion works best in for the most luck in growing big, heatlhy bulbs.

If you have a hankering for growing a rare tuber from far flung places - like Oca - look for one that has been selected to be more day nuetral or to start flowering/tuber growth/fruiting early. You could try and trick your plant into doing its thing by excluding light in the right amounts.

Solar Input grows Plants

One of the reasons that varieties adapted to coastal regions with their thin sun doled out sparingly through the clouds do well up here in the north is because we can get about the same solar input. The total amount of sun energy hours ripens the crop and is the reason that I am often hunting pepper varieties that do well in England. They often do better here with our blazing sunny summers even though our growing seasons are much shorter. On the other hand, this will not work as well to crops that typically do better in cooler temperatures.

The shifting amount of sunlight does have one obvious effect of relevance to gardeners that like to plan a whole year's harvest. Fall gardens take a bit longer to mature than their the optimistic predictions on the seed package. If I remember correctly, season extension gardening guru Coleman suggests adding two weeks to the Days to Maturity estimate when planning a fall garden.

Bringing us back to the Winter Solstice

One tradition for some gardeners is to wintersow promises of spring on this day. This is a technique to grow plants that can either take the cold or need cold to germinate. Today, on the other hand, I plan on potting up some dwarf cherry tomatoes to see if I can get a little holiday indoor red and green during this season of cold and dark.

***
Jugalone resistant companion planting studies

Path of sunlight at different latitudes - creates a chart

Sunset/sunrise calculator - National Research Council of Canada: where the sun rises and set, the path it follows and the length of shadows. Very interesting.

I was rushed through this post as I am setting up my new computer today (old one is very old) so I'll be back to add pictures, more links and examples (like you needed to read an even longer post!) and check for errors/typos. Feel free to help point out my mistakes!

Harvesting icy vegetables Monday

2011-12-19T10:22:00.000-08:00

The snow has melted which is not really a great thing for the veggies hugging the ground for warmth but it does mean that I can see them. So I gathered a few to bring in for supper.

Icy cabbage, huddling close to the land cress, can't-kill-me dandelion, shivering green onions, fainting Johnny jump up flowers, long suffering bietina, chicory-cicles, spiffy spinach, winter lettuce, still perky purple peacock flowerbuds, can-take-any-weather kale, and sturdy sage.

Otherwise known as RRMxSM F1 cabbage, belle isle upland cress, common dandelion, can't remember which one green onion, Viola tricolor mix flowers, bietina chard, sugarloaf chicory, rumpled leaf spinach, winter lettuce, purple peacock kale-broccoli, rainbow lacinato kale and red ursa kale, and common culinary sage.

These were combined with some apples mellowing in storage from the fall harvest.

Lots 'o apples take over a room.

To make a lovely coleslaw.

***

I haven't mentioned it in awhile but Harvest Monday is hosted by Daphne's Dandelions. It's a place to share your harvest whether it be a few precious peas grown in a pot to quarter acre of corn.

In other news, I have enough tomato requests to send out the first batch of seeds. They might take a bit longer than normal what with the holiday rush. There are more if anyone else wants to give a tomato (or eight) a home. Don't forget to look on the right hand side bar for my regular trade/give away list as well.

Tomato Seed Trade

2011-12-13T12:55:00.000-08:00

Anyone up to giving some of my tomato seeds a new home? I've gone through my seeds and I am embarrased to say that the list is nine pages long (yes single space, normal font). At any rate, I thought I'd thin out the Solanum lycopersicum section. I'll be growing out some of these so quantities will vary. No trade or postage required but if you are in a sharing mood, I've listed what I'm looking for below.

Tomatoes available:

Lots of interest in re-homing those tomatoes so updated list follows:

Gold Nugget Cherry
Purple Smudge
~~Yellow Brandywine~~ - all out
Italian Friend - ?
Tommy Toe
Teton or something like it
Brown Berry
Mortgage Lifter, pale leaf - very old seed
Novosadski jabujar
Lutescent - very old seed
Stick
Black Cherry
~~Red Cluster Pear~~ - all out
Phoenix Pink Mix
Yellow Grape
~~Sub-arctic~~ - all out
Smokey Mountain
~~Cheetham’s Potato Leaf~~ - all out
Giallo a Grappoli
~~Aussie~~ - all out
Pixie
~~Red Robin~~ - all out
~~Rondoc~~ - all out
Hartman’s Yellow Gooseberry
OSU
Chocolate Cherry
OSU x Green Zebra
Principe Borghese
~~Hundreds and Thousands~~ - all out
~~Purple Calabash~~ - all out
~~Velvet Red~~ - all out
~~Bushy Charbarovsky~~ - all out
Dwarf Champion
Window Dressing - Wagner
OSU x Make my day
Make my day
Sweet Cassidy
~~Tigerella~~ - all out
Yellow Grape Tomato
Tiny Tim
Taxi
San Pedro
~~Bradley~~ - all out

If you're offering, here's some of My Want List

Cucumbers: prolific and early
Beans: very early 'green' eating type
Dandelion: anything unusual in flower or leaf form

Red stemmed chicory
New Zealand Spinach
Red Malabar Spinach

Edible Hibiscus - sunset, cranberry, other
Skirret clone

***

Email me - right side bar with your address and list of tomato dreams.

Harvesting for the Holidays Monday

2011-12-12T11:09:00.000-08:00

Today we harvested our Christmas tree from the small group of spruce planted, I think, for that purpose. Most are a bit overgrown so work better as an animal refuge rather than as a holiday decoration. My girls told me we'll have to plant some more. Great idea!

Youngest is holding the top of this young spruce affected by spruce bud worm.

Other things you can do with woody debris (that is not part of the Walnut family unless you plan on using it around a planting that is jugalone tolerant) from your yard:

1. Use it to start a compost pile. Criss cross the branches for the base to improve drainage.
2. Build a brush pile, in a damp spot if you are concerned about fire, as an animal shelter. Note that you will probably shelter things that eat your plants too but the diversity is good right! Besides, in the city, rabbits mostly ate my weeds. I think they were on to something. EcosystemGardening.com uses this system to recycle invasive Norway Maple.
3. Dig a trench and pile them in, covering them with soil. They will rot down creating an organic rich bed. Especially useful in areas with thin, poor soil. See hugelkultur in all its variations. Here's a nice one where they show a lasagna style bed built with sticks.
4. Bushy branches are great as pea sticks and the thicker ones make a nice trellis. Some lovely examples at Allotment Forestry.
5. Large branches can be used to edge a path and small ones can be laid down like wood mulch to be crunched underfoot.
6. Bundle them up and innoculate with mushroom spores, place in a damp spot. Let me know how well this works!
7. Use as kindling than use the ashes as ammendments for soil. Safety concerns include: wood that has been contaminated with chemicals, heavy metal uptake of trees, making the soil too alkaline. I'll have to let you do your own research on this one.
8. Use feathery pine branches as protection for plants less tolerant to hard freezes and oscillating temperatures. They will help hold on to the insulating snow.

P.S. Yes, we're still harvesting vegetables:

My littlest making her happy, funny face while eating Purple Peacock Brocokale intended for dinner.

Harvesting Cold Day Salads Monday

2011-11-28T03:24:00.001-08:00

The garden is a luscious salad bar this time of year until the real cold and snow hits which could be any time now. We are gathering cold hardy lettuce, kale, cabbage, fennel, coriander, kale, asian greens like mustards and bok choi, kale, arugula, the first corn salad/mache,* herbs, onions, more kale, bietina (particularly hardy chard in my experience) and chicories like radicchio.

Beautiful heading raddichio. I sprinkled handfuls of a collection of old seed beneath the apple trees last fall so I couldn't tell you the exact variety but it was tasty!

In fact, I debated calling this post for the love of chicory. Even the deer have expressed their appreciation by nibbling off the tops of some beautiful red heads revealing their mottled interiors. At least they left the roots to grow again next year. It wasn't until I started growing them that I learned to appreciate their pleasingly bitter taste from the deceptively named sugarloaf to the deep reds of classic radicchio to the buttery yellow of forced Belgium endive.

What's not to love? They are perennials.** In their first year, all going well, they produce heads that can be as lovely as flowers in the fall garden. In their second year, they produce a tower of sky blue flowers rather like the wild chicories that you may see along the roadway and like those wild flowers, they will happily seed themselves nearby the mother plants. These self sown seedlings along with those I've started in situ in the fall, have produced some of the most beautiful first year heads. Subsequent years will produce more greens and roots.

At my old place, sugarloaf chicory often made its way into the yawn. It's easy to remove but I often left it, getting a kick out of the contrasting giant apple green leaves. Cutting back the flowerheads prevents this or just aim them in a more appropriate direction.

You can eat the outer leaves but they are quite bitter or wait for cool temperatures to increase their sugar content. Digging up and storing the roots in the cellar will provide you with a winter feast of chicons - forced heads - at a time of year when fresh vegetables are thin on the ground. If you can't wait, then you can blanch the inner growing leaves by upturning a bowl or pot on them. This works for dandelions too.

Though they make a lovely base or complement for a salad, my favourite use is in pasta dishes. Fried lightly with onion, with or without other vegetables, then layered in a cheesy lasagna is delicious. The bitterness is transformed into depth. If you enjoy the way they cut sweet, then stir fry or grilling is also a nice option. Or layer raw on some fresh fall apples atop a shredded head of sugarloaf and a sprinkle of grated cheese.

This picture is taken later in the fall than the previous and you can see the deepening of colour in the heads.

Even my children will eat it though not on the plate. There is something about that circular eating zone that changes vegetables from tasty trail snack to dreaded barrier against leaving the table. The other day, my youngest was cutting up a sugarloaf with the odd leaf making its way into her mouth. I said, "You like chicory!" She smiled and replied "no" while continuing to chew.

* My corn salad is off to a slow start at the new place. I know that once it starts to self seed, I'll be in the corn salads for years but I sure do miss its mild flavour now. If you have a cold frame/polytunnel, you can harvest it almost all year too! The exception is probably after its seeded in summer along with days that your door is frozen shut. Otherwise, it's extremely cold hardy.
** I've also heard short-lived perennial. It may be but as I always have youngsters taking over from their flagging parents, I haven't noticed.

There are all kinds of chicory from loose leaf to ones with thick stems to those with tight conical or more pointed heads. Berton Seeds will give you a sense of their diversity.

***

!!Happy b-day to my baby gardeners who are 6 and 8 today!!

Sorry for the disruption in your regular layout

2011-11-08T07:51:00.000-08:00

I'm working on a new one so this blog might do funny things over the next few days.

The Root of all Harvest Mondays

2011-11-07T06:06:00.000-08:00

I had a nice harvest of parsnip that were grown in combination with Swiss Chard. Half the row was left in the ground to use in the spring and for seed.*

The details of roots dug:

I've been digging up roots while the ground is unfrozen to store in our cellar - not quite of the root kind as it's located in our basement so though it is insulated and cooler than the rest of the house, it's not particularly humid but I have stored in such conditions before with a fair amount of luck.

Roots represented for our winter harvest hopes include: carrot, beets, parsnips, winter 'daikon' radish, horseradish and jeruselum artichoke. Also packed away are dandelion roots, chicory, and celariac for forcing. Potted up for greens are swiss chard, bulb fennel and cardoon. I've also got some canna and dahlia bulbs (both technically edible - I've not tried them yet) and some gladiolas resting the cold away.

At the far left are trimmed cardoon leaves with some small, self seeded daikon radishes and some equally undersized celariac for storage. I plan on forcing the celariac for celery leaves. Not sure why it didn't want to grow this year but I'm guessing water stress as it was in the sandtrap garden. Next year, I'll incorporate more organic matter in its planting location. Celariac makes a decorative border.

Some of these are experimental. My attempts to find further references to overwintering globe artichoke roots - and therefore cardoon - have come to not.** The bulb fennel is another trial as its root is not dissimilar to carrot.

Next year, I'll have sweet cicely, divisions of lovage hopefully and oyster root (Scorzonera and salsify) but for now, I want to increase my stock more than I want to eat them during the whiteout. Also resting undisturbed in the garden are crosnes (Stachys affinis), and various multiplier onions.

Exciting discovery!

So I've discovered that parsnips and Swiss Chard grow quite well together. I wasn't sure if the heavy leaf cover of the Swiss Chard would overcompete with the parsnips but perhaps, the different levels of the root growth - though Swiss Chard does have a tap like root, more obvious in some, it is not as long as the parsnip and has a lot bushy secondary roots near the surface - seem to have enabled them to be good neighbours. The first parsnip I pulled out from the clump of Swiss Chard was baseball bat sized. The only roots that weren't worth pulling were crowded out by their own kind. Clearly I didn't thin adequately when they germinated, probably thinking that the bugs would do it for me as they often do. It's a nice combination as the colourful Swiss Chard fills in the spaces between the parsnip leaves. If you want to go all out, planting this with a border of nasturtiums sets off the bright colours of varities like Rainbow Lights Chard or a mix of gold and reds. I also like to interplant Rhubarb with dark leafed swiss chard and maybe a border of dwarf red tipped marigolds or red English Daisy to play off the ruby theme.

Storing in autumn leaves:

A range of chicory heads as pretty as flowers. I am going to cut and eat these over the next little while and then store the roots for forcing later if they so oblige. There are varieties specifically bred for forcing to produce Belgium Endive.

Previously, I've always stored my roots in the quintessential moist sand (rarely) or in plain, old garden dirt (mostly) in low boxes. This year, I thought I'd try leaves as I've heard the odd mention of it. Apparently, a drawback is that the leaves will rot. In my case, that might help (assuming it doesn't affect the roots negatively) as it would add moisture. We'll see. To further increase humidity, I'll be adding bowls of water around the closed off basement cellar. Some of my roots are planted up in soil as well such as celariac, and others are loose. I'll report back how they do.

In the meantime - the how to:

Typically roots that are stored for eating in the winter are those that can either go into dormancy before growing again like potatoes or are biennial so they wait until after a period of environmental change, such as cold, before resuming growth then flowering and setting seed. Therefore, storage either in the ground or in a special made storage place like a cellar is the way to get seeds from vegetables such as carrots and parsnips.

You can also extend the time that you get to eat some tasty greens like celery by potting them up and bringing them inside. Which brings me to another fun thing to do with stored roots, force them. This means you take them from their cozy cellar bed of sand/dirt and pot them in some more sand/dirt and then place in a warm spot and water them. They will start to grow. If you want them to green up, then you'd place them in a sunny spot but if you want them to grow pale, delicate and sometimes more palatable, such as for dandelion yellows (sounds like a disease doesn't it but it tastes quite yummy) then grow them in the dark. This is the way that people produce Belgium Endive or Chicons.*** Many leaves of roots are edible including turnip, beet, carrot (so I understand), chicory, radish, parsley root (and parsley), celariac and even cabbage.

Some big ol' beets giving two harvests: leaves and roots. As siblings of Swiss Chard, you can use beet leaves in a similar way though they might be a bit tougher. The other day I fried them up with some garlic and mixed them together with coucous, an egg, a bit of wine vinegar and some flour then fried this as patties. It was sublime.

A root cellar is the classic place to store roots that require cool temperatures and high humidity, though placing them in a plastic bag in your fridge works well too. If you live in mild climate, you could probably just dig them out of the ground on mild days or build a clamp. Piling a bunch of fall leaves like a frost blanket over your in-ground roots will help keep frost out. I recently saw a suggestion in motherearthnews to place these fall leaves in a plastic bag for easy removal and replacement. Good idea! Even for those in harsher climates, this would extend the time you had access to your in-ground roots. It is also a way to protect roots that might need a bit of help to make it through the winter.

I have a lot of success overwintering vegetables in situ for seed saving the next year or eating early in the spring. The only classic root crop that pops to my mind that never overwinters, except the obviously frost tender ones, are turnips. I also get heavy losses of carrots. We get heavy, consistent snow cover so this insulates the ground most years. However, I have no access to them for the same reason.

Some stuff I did earlier: potted celaric, some misc. roots stored in leaves, a bag of edible leaves that were cut off the roots to make a vegetable stock, and a bag of carrots for the fridge.

To store:

1. Dig up roots as late as possible in the season. Be delicate with them
2. You don't need to remove all the dirt but feel free to brush off excess
3. Undamaged, well grown roots of storage varities do best
4. Trim off the greens to ~2 inch stubs - careful not to damage growing crown
5. Place in your favourite storage medium and container - generally recommended is sand, sawdust or vermiculite as medium in some sort of tub.

There are lots of good books and sites out there with charts to guide you when it comes to ideal storage conditions. Here's a reference from good Cornell University.

* To select for the best plants, you can dig up your biennial roots, inspect for insect damage and qualities (even sampling a bit of the end of the root) then replant. It also doesn't hurt to give the roots a blanket of mulch to protect against frost unless you have a serious problem with rodents nibbling away at your roots.
** Actually I did find a couple mentions of people trying it but not picture filled examples of them succeeding so if you did this, speak up! I'm mostly interested in trying to force them for no reason other than curiousity. I have left some in the ground that I plan on covering with a thick layer of leaves and dirt (rather like a clamp) to see if I can carry them through in ground. Probably wishful thinking.
*** You won't be surprised to find out that there is more than one way to grow a chicon. You can also pot the roots up in sand/sandy soil, place in a cool spot and then when you want to force them, bring them into a warm, but dark place and water them. I've also read in Salad Leaves for All Sesons by Dowding that you can force them in a plastic bag (or as he put it a bin liner or polythene sack) in a warm, dark place. They can be laid horizontally.

Easy Cabbage Breeding Harvest Monday*

2011-10-30T16:05:00.000-07:00

The Offspring

Cross between Savoy San Michele and Red Rock Mammoth, F1 weighing in at a respectable 4 lbs.

I'm going to admit it right now. I'm pretty chuffed about my cabbage babies. Okay, so they aren't really my babies but the children of a couple randy Brassica oleracea var. capitata and I can't even claim any fancy scientific sounding techniques to produce the cross. Perhaps it is most accurate to say that I was the match maker. The bees were enablers. However as the cabbage and bees have little to say on the matter, I'm going claim ownership such as one can (I'll happily explain how you can make the same cross below).

Clockwise: San Michele, Red Rock Mammoth and their spawn, with the eloquent name RRMxSM F1 at the bottom.

I hadn't realized that I should be all atwitter about this cross as I hadn't harvested any until Saturday. In fact, until Saturday, I wasn't entirely sure if I had succeeded on creating a cross. Sure, they looked intermediary between the two parents - a hard headed, delicious, pest resistant heritage red called Red Rock Mammoth and a beautiful blush savoy called San Michele. From the onset, the babies had lovely violet/green leaves which got progressively brighter and more purple as cold weather set in. They did appear to be slightly more savoyed than the Red Rock but it wasn't until I sliced off the heads that I saw the remarkable difference in the texture and colour of the leaves.

RRMxSM F1: violet splashed leaves.

It looks more like a savoy in cross section to my eye but instead of merely having a slight pink/purple blush in the centre of the head like the San Michele, it is mottled right through with violet splashed leaves. Even the taste is right between the two parents being sweeter and nuttier than the savoy but still a bit more 'green' than the red.

The F1s (first generation of a cross between two varieties) seem quite uniform so far from the reports back I've heard from the seed I sent out. Assuming these babies survive the winter - I'm testing them for winter hardiness** with nothing but leaf mulch and snow - then I'll let the bees do their business and we'll if there is more variation in the F2s. I suspect so and hope for the opportunity to find out!

Overachieving cabbage with multiple, sizeable secondary heads below main head.

Most of my cabbage plenty is still in the garden waiting for a later, big harvest before the real cold and snow sets in. It leaves me with a question for a future post: How to preserve all that cabbage? Here are a few suggestions but I am open to more:

* Store in cold cellar with intact roots.
* Cut in wedges and freeze for cooked dishes.
* Freeze whole for use as a wrappers for cabbage rolls OR make cabbage rolls and freeze them.
* Freezer slaw
* Dry - interesting
* Saurekraut
* Kimchi - Extreme Gardener (link at end) has a lovely looking jar with apples
* Otherwise pickle

Rainbow cabbage in a pot.

Easy Cabbage Breeding

You may have noticed that I'm the kind of gardener that likes techniques that create maximum success for minimum effort. As a rule of thumb, this involves working with nature.

Baby cabbage cross in spring.

Case in point: last spring, a row of undersized Red Rock Mammoths and one beautiful San Michele cabbage breezed through the winter. As Brassica oleracea is an outbreeder and most varieties are reputed to be self incompatible - rejects its own pollen - I figured the pods on the single San Michele might well be crossed. At the end of the season and some close calls with people snapping off flowerheads... I got a small amount of cabbage seeds from the San Michele and a good amount of seed from the Red Rocks. I gave away a bunch of the seed around and started some myself.

The parents as plants: Greener one is San Michele, more purple is Red Rock Mammoth. If you are curious, those flowerheads draping over them are from a kind of chinese cabbage.

Turns out the bees and the cabbage cooperated. So if you have a hankering to try it yourself, you know the parents. I'd love to hear from someone who tries it!

***

* Yes, I wrote this Sunday night. Monday morning I'm going to the tree nursery day for fall sales!!
** A note on winter hardiness and cabbages. I find that heads of cabbages tend to turn to mush in the spring but often small heads, roots and stems make it through sprouting new leaves and flower heads. I've started to cut off big heads but leave the rest in the ground in hopes of getting seed. I might try to take some cuttings of the cross to overwinter in the cellar. Not sure yet because my interest really is in producing cabbages that you can save seed from in our northern location. For those of you that hadn't contemplated it before, cabbage is biennial so the easiest way to save seed would be to have plants that survive in the ground during the cold months. As an outbreeder, you should be saving seed from as large a population as is reasonable. Cabbage seed stores for a while so if you are restricted for space, then just save for one generation. The two cabbages mentioned in the post are both large needing at least 3 feet square but 4 feet would be better to form, in my experience, 2-4lb heads though much larger have been reported.

***

How do I grow Cabbage and other family members?

Saving Cabbage Family Seed

Extreme Gardener (excellent blog) also writes about this cross in Blushing Cabbages

In praise of the Litchi Tomato

2011-10-28T08:30:00.000-07:00

The important bits: flowers, fruit and spiny leaves. Not my ungloved, unscathed hands. Not a fast procedure harvesting to avoid punctures but possible.

It sure doesn't look like any tomato you've ever grown before because it isn't though it is related. Litchi Tomato, aka Morelle De Balbis, known in proper gardenize as Solanum sisymbriifolium bears reams of tasty, juicy and somewhat seedy red fruit guarded by pretty and poky yellow spines. The whole plant is covered with them in fact with the exception of the large bluish white flowers.

To get your taste of these fruits, you will have to get ahold of some seeds (I probably have a few to share), start at the same time as tomatoes and plant out after last frost. It'll begin small and innocent enough but after a few months, it will be between the size of a tall kid or a giant adult depending. Mine have all been around 4 feet though I've heard at least one report of 8 feet. Harvesting the fruit is a delicate matter of avoiding the spines but they are a wonderful addition to the solanacaea fruit collection such as ground cherries and tomatillos. I made a sauce with tomatillos, litchi tomato and apples with a squeeze of orange juice that was reminiscent of cranberries.

If you look in the background, you'll note hoar frost on the ground. In the foreground, an unphased Litchi Tomato plant.

It's taste is often described as being similar to cherries, or at least a cherry crossed with a tomato, with a pleasantly (in my mind) seedy raspberry overtone. It will continue to pump out the bee friendly flowers and tasty fruit until AFTER first frost. That's right, if you live in a mild climate, you may be more weary of planting this thorn machine because it will survive several degrees below zero celcius.

It's thorniess could be seen as an advantage if placed at the edge of the garden to discourage larger, thinner skinned visitors like other people or perhaps a thorn weary racoon... Anyone who happens to grow a slightly less prickly variation wcould be pretty popular as this plant could benefit from a little refinement to make it less painful to pick with easier detachment from the husk, earlier and more prolific. I've heard different stories on its taste too that could be related to growing conditions or genetic variation - probably both.

When I used to garden in a city community plot, I noted the Colorado potato beetle liked them - you could see this as a trap crop or as a problem - but I haven't seen the same issue on my rural property. They would potentially be subjected to the same pests and diseases as other tomato relatives though I haven't noticed any foliar diseases but they may harbour them.

A close up of the leaves after light ground frost showing no damage but certainly possible damage to you if you were to fall into it.

I grow it as a tasty 'trail' treat as I walk through my garden or an ingredient in salads and other dishes that could benefit their fruity flavour, and as a pretty addition to the productive beds. Then again, I have a thing for thistles and their prickly friends.

***

My source was La Societe des Plantes

There are a few other Canadian sources listed on Seeds of Diversity

Still Harvesting Beans and Eggplants Monday

2011-10-24T06:06:00.000-07:00

This is the year when frost did not want to come though I suspect in a few days, my faith in winter will be renewed.

Beans! Beans? Really still beans? Kid steals unexpected late beans before dinner.

The tomatoes are fruiting again, the peppers and eggplants never stopped and the pumpkin vines that had been ravished by powdery mildew have resprouted leaves and have begun to flower anew. I had been waiting for the icy leveller to end this extended bounty so I could pull up the remains and plant my garlic but yesterday I said, "enough is enough" and yanked them all anyhow. Pulling up vigorous green plants is difficult but as a gardener, you have to be tough. The back suntrap garden looks tidy now with grass and leaf clippings on top of the bare soil. Garlic is in the ground and my sights have turned to the reamining gardens for clean up.

Lazy gardener still hasn't put away all the pumpkins and gourds. I have about as many in the cold storage room. These are hanging out in my garage at the moment.

As of today, I am still harvesting:

Beans
Peas - second planting
Volunteer Tomatoes
Litchi Tomatoes
Tomatillos
Ground Cherry - annual
The odd summer squash
Lettuce
Pak choi
Chicory
Mustards - second generation of self seeded
Arugula
Kales
Cardoon
Leeks
Chard
Parsnips
Beets
Carrots
Cabbage
Broccoli - secondary heads
Salsify & Scorzonera
Horseradish soon
Green onions, mostly perennials
Grains: Amaranth, sorghum
Apples - lots of apples
Herbs: Coriander, sage, oregano, thyme, rosemary, bay laurel, parsley, anise hyssop and so on
Flowers: Nasturtiums, mallows, calendula, borage etc...

Seven apples trees = Lots of apple pie! (and apple fritters, and apple sauce and apple randomly thrown into various unexpected dishes - going to get myself an evaporator).

This is all I can remember right now. The squash is in cold storage with the root crops soon to follow. I have about a month before the snow starts to fall thick and heavy frost makes working the ground literally hard. This has been one beautiful fall.

Bumblebee is appreciative of late fall flowers on this litchi tomato.

Where are you?

2011-10-07T13:50:00.000-07:00

I'm overcoming a minor ailment combined with a lot of volunteering work.

P.S. Organic Week is October 15-22 this year. There should be lots of events showing up on their website for Ottawa soon if not already. However, I have the skinny on Canadian Organic Grower if anyone is dying to know now. Also, I'm hoping some of you guys will have your own organic celebrations! How about bake a citron day? I have lots of extras... please come get them.

Back soon promise!

A Sweet Haul

2011-09-13T11:46:00.001-07:00

One of the descent producing plants in The Back Rock Garden

Ipomoea batatas grew like a viney weed all summer and now, with temperatures threatening to drop at week's end, I've yanked out the vines and carved open the ground to see what the ground had been hiding.

Here are some nice vines growing in The Back Rock Garden with a pumpkin wandering across.

The sweets were grown in two locations this year, both new gardens, but with very different results though I think I have an explanation. The first is The Barn Circle Garden - figured I'd give them official names now and I opt for descriptive - which was created by layering on horse manure enriched soil directly atop sod. Only short season varieties of sweets, from Mapple Farms such as George Jet, were grown with black plastic mulch (aka black garbage bags stretched over the soil and secured with more soil around the edges) with 18 inch centres.

I believe this is Georgia Jet showing growth cracks.

The second garden will be called The Back Rock Garden because it is built around and on top of a large outcropping beneath the dirt that can be seen in parts where I dug it out. This was created with semi-circular berms and swales following the topography. The sod in the swales was piled up on the berms to increase the soil depth of the beds. The sweets - a mixture of varieties including some from a friend in France that were planted late - were grown with clear plastic mulch in roughly the same spacing.

You can tell that your sweets are really starting to bulk up when the ground starts to be pushed up near the plant into a mound. Here, I removed the plastic mulch and a bit of dirt.

The haul from The Barn Circle Garden was pretty descent. I got lots of large bakers. They were almost exclusively directly under where the plant emerged from the soil. Didn't find any wanderers.

When injured, sweets produce latex to seal the wounds.

However, despite luxuriant vine growth in The Back Rock Garden, the harvest was significantly poorer. There were a couple plants with good yields which were the short season ones but the ones from France, that probably needed a longer growing season and were planted a touch later, yielded little to no sweets emphasizing the importance of variety. The only one that made a sweet potato of any size was Beauregard. However, the France plants, also had some flowers unlike the short season ones.

This is actually from a third location where I put some homeless plants hence the grass clipping mulch around it. It had the prettiest flower. You can see their relationship to morning glories.

They were also some adventurous roots in The Back Rock Garden that given time may have fattened into what would be impressively large sweets. I also think that the way the garden was built with sod piled on top of sod might have supplied too much nitrogen hence the beautiful vine growth. Hard to say.

A variety named White Fraser. It didn't have as high of a yield as the other two major ones - Georgia Jet and Tainung 65 - that I tried this year but still respectable.

The Back Rock Garden is a sun trap facing south with clear plastic so the soil overall would have been hotter - good for sweet potatoes - but it may have suffered from more drought - not so good - being higher in elevation from the other and sandy in soil composition. I also get a lot more Japanese beetle damage in the back.

White Frazer from the Back Rock Garden with Japanese Beetle Grub Damage.

Now the challenge is to cure them as they need both high heat and humidity to seal the skins from moisture loss and improve storage considerably. I don't have any easy way of doing this like an independently heated room so I'm trying placing them in paper bags in a plastic container with lid that is left with a small crack open in the sun. We'll see how it goes.

Here's the round-up. Not bad but we'll try and double it for next year.

***

Want to grow sweet potatoes? I recommend the book Sweet Potatoes for the Home Garden by Ken Allan. Can't wait until then? Here are my slap-dash instructions (the book is really good):

1. Order some slips or tubers to make slips of a SHORT season variety in the winter/spring.
2. Plant a week or two after all danger of frost in a sunny well drained spot with ideally light (sandy) soil with neutral to slighly acid pHl. You can plant these up beforehand if they come early or if you want to give them a head start. Just don't put them out until soil and air are warm.
3. To increase success, increase the heat and plant in raised mounds, row cover, or with clear plastic mulch. Black seems to do okay too but Mr. Allan's authorative suggestion is for clear. Put the mulch on a couple weeks before you plant. It should be pulled tight over the bed and secured at the edges with soil. Plant into Xs cut into the plastic about 18 inches apart and use more soil or sand to seal these. You want to make a little depression in the planting area to funnel water.
5. It doesn't hurt to add organic matter to the soil before planting. Sweet potatoes are reputed to survive with little water and nutrients but they do better if they get enough to drink. I wouldn't fertilize (but then I never do) but adding a bit of compost to the site should be nothing but helpful.
6. Let them grow.
7. Harvest before first frost when the temperatures start to cool off. I like to leave mine in the ground until early-mid September.
8. Cure for storage. This is keeping them at high temperatures, around 27C, and high humidity for several weeks (according to Mapple Farms). I am trying to figure out an easy way of doing this. Click on their brochure for more info.
9. Store at room temperature unwashed until you want to use them.
10. Use small ones to start slips in the spring!

Odd Veg. Trials - Cuke and Melon

2011-09-08T16:50:00.000-07:00

I'll let you know a little secret: I've discovered that I am a collector. Not of stamps or teddy bears or vintage uniforms but of edible plants. Surprise! Okay so you aren't that surprised. Perhaps you too have been tempted by goblin egg gourds or mouse melons too. For your interest, here are my experiences in upper Ottawa valley growing some weird vining stuf:

Burr Gherkin

Impressively productive compared to my cursed cucumbers and for something with a leaf like a watermelon. Actually, Cucumis anguria, had some competition from the citron for pumping out the fruit this summer. I would grow it again if I could figure out what I can do with this bounty of little fruit. Perhaps... gherkins?

My source: Seed trade from down south in the U.S. I hope to have some available this year.

Achocha

Stories of Cyclanthera species impressive productivity in mild climes such as the UK did not come true in the sand trap of the old garden or during our mini drought, interspersed as it was by storms. I can confirm that it is a very impressive climer however.

My source: Seed trade from a mild part of Europe.

Citron

Want to surprise your friends with your prowess at growing watermelons? Try the perserving melon: citron, Citrullus lanatus. You can't split this baby open and dig out juicy goodness unfortunately but you can prepare all manner of canned yummies. Mostly they are for a lemon preserve but I have heard of them being used in place of cucumber and apple. Currently on my research list as you can see I have a few dozen. Anyone want to try one?

My source: Perth Seedy Saturday

Gourds - exotic up here

They aren't ripe yet but they're trying. I'll have to update you further on how they are doing. Langenaria siceraria is pretty enough to grow as a decorative especially as its large white flowers open later in the day.

My source: An italian squash and gourd mix

Mouse Melon

I didn't get a chance to grow Melothria scabra year but I they get tops for cuteness and have a nice flavour the one time I did try. They were grown in shade so descriptions of vines dripping with little melons was inaccurate for me. I'll try them again before throwing in the towel.

I'd love to hear other people's experience with the cuke pretenders and other unusual edible gourds and melons.

Harvest is a lot of work Monday

2011-08-29T06:54:00.000-07:00

The first batch of grapes waiting to become jelly and a couple purple spored puffballs.

The horn of plenty is spilling over with lots of preserving in the works. As I am up to my elbows in plums, grapes, apples, tomatoes and so on, I've decided to pass over the reigns of Harvest Monday to my eldest.

Go on then, what are we harvesting?

Woohoo! Need I say more?

"It's hot but we went outside and harvested tomatoes, grapes, a chum (plum-cherry) from our new baby tree, giant swiss chard that looked like wings, spaceship summer squash, basil which tasted strong, ground cherries which tasted good, corn which tasted sweet and some lettuce seeds."

"They are like tiny pins topped with what looks like dandelion fluff. You have to take a seed head and take off the fluff then you open it and put the seeds in a jar."

"Then we went to the new garden and harvested more tomatoes, some eggplants, peppers and melon and a citron. We weren't sure it was a citron because our puppy dog moved all the plant tags."

There also appears to be a bunch of onions too in our harvest basket.

***

Brought to you by the kids and this citron: which is indeed a citron.

Eldest with gap toothed smile, youngest and the much loved citron melon which unlike some that are round and stripey, ours are mottled and large.

What to do with my Harvest Monday?

2011-08-15T10:46:00.001-07:00

Here is the second picking of apples from one of my six (I think?) apple trees. These seem to be early, thin skinnned, juicy and large apples. They come from an old tree that would be quite large if it hadn't been topped some time back. The apples would be wonderful to eat out of hand if it wasn't for the birds pecking at them and the odd bug damage. As it is, they look fantastic. And these, my friends, are ORGANIC apples. Not a spray has touched their gentle faces or shielding leaves. I have done nothing to this tree so we can thank the previous owners for their fine care, and this tree for its fine apples.

Not sure what is going on in this shot: one kid didn't want to look up because of the glaringly diffuse light of a cloudy sky, the dog was chillin' and the other kid was distracted by something 'over there.' But did you see the apples?

My problem is what to do with them all. They aren't storage apples so please post your favourite freezing/canning recipes. I like baking so go wild.

The Mystery Bean and other Seed Stories

2011-08-12T17:18:00.000-07:00

I normally plant three types of pole beans (and many other bush beans but we'll leave that exciting tale for another installation): Hunter - a green flat pod with white seeds, Cherokee Trail of Tears - prolific, small black bean with round pods and some sort of 'cranberry' that I originally got at a fruit/veg store. This year I harvested five kinds of beans. I have been saving these seeds for many years and never remember this happening before. I figure that it must be one of two things: 1) I forgot that I planted other varieties, or 2) some pollination shenanigans has been going on.

My mystery bean

This bean turns out to be the most prolific of all my pole beans this year and I have no idea what it is. The pods are flat like the Hunter but purple like the Cherokee and the beans are a pale lavender/tan colour. If you recognize this bean as something you sent me, please jog my memory. In the meantime, here is some possible evidence of crossing. First the beans:

From left to right: Hunt, Mystery Bean and Cherokee Trail of Tears.

You can see that the pale 'lavender' mystery bean has the same markings as the Hunter bean. And now the dry pods:

From top to bottom: Mystery bean, Hunter and Cherokee Trail of Tears

I have to admit that I assumed all the purple pods were Cherokee though there were actually very few round pods. Most of them were flat like the Hunter.

From Left to Right: Hunter, 'Cranberry,' and Mystery Bean

And among the rest of the beans was one other surprise, some of the (not true) 'cranberry' were streaked brown?? I might have planted some variety like that but I've only found two pods so far that contained these nuggets of difference.

From left to right: brown marked bean and 'Cranberry'

Viva la diversidad! Here is a picture of the twining vines of various hues.

A twisting rainbow

Besides puzzling over these beans, I was threshing radish seeds. Here is a my quick step by step.

1. First gather dried pods

A pile of pods

2. Strip the pods from the stems

3. Step on them or rub them between gloved hands or use a masher like my niece. Or some other method to remove the pod from the seed.

You may recall her as a tyke in the Cabbage picture

4. Pour chaff and seeds into a bowl or bucket of water and swirl around. Remove the floating bits of pods and pour off most of the water leaving just a bit of water and seeds on the bottom then pour the rest through a strainer.

Almost all done. These were rattail radish seeds actually and I had a lot fewer pods. With the daikon radish of most of these pictures, I needed a bucket.

5. Dry and label seeds well!

P.S. Nagging Aunt of the Garden - that's NAG to you - doesn't have time to open her twitter account but wants to tell you to go buy garlic at one of the festivals round these parts tomorrow! I'll be in Carp if you want to sign up to be a member of Canadian Organic Gardeners. :)

Apples and other dangerous Harvest(s) Monday

2011-08-08T07:30:00.000-07:00

I've shared with the bugs. I will share with the critters including deer. And then we will feast on the bits that remain. This tree is close to ripe now.

A hint of autumn was in the air when I made my first batch of apple sauce yesterday but not before braving the bald headed hornet. Actually I didn't come face to face with them but my poor niece did. I just hope that the now eradicated nest build at head level in the apple tree isn't the thing she remembers most about her trip to Canada.

I asked the name of the tree that we got the large, early maturing soft and delicious apples and the previous owner answered: "This is an old tree." So that's their name folks: Old Tree Apples.

We are also dripping with ground cherries. I bought these starts at a local organic nursery and I asked what variety they were and got 'Ground Cherries' as an answer. They are not partial to the searing heat we've been having or the mini-drought which thankfully was broken by a nice soaking yesterday. Other than eating out of hand, anyone have some good recipes?

Some sort of ground cherry that has been getting sunburnt over the last week. Still lots of life left in it though and it's smothered with fruit.

Related to the cherry in the husk is the tomatillo. I suppose these are almost salsa verde ready but not quite ripe enough for me yet -

- and their dangerous cousin, the Litchi tomato or Morelle De Balbis as it is known in French.

It's a pretty plant. In my garden, only reaching about 3-4 feet though I've heard stories of tree like monsters.

Unripe berries equiped with the same spines that cover this plant.

It's a weed in some places but here we 'just' get ripe fruit. Certainly not something I'd like to step on while trapsing around the garden.

I really like the flavour though some are less partial. I also like the fruit Sunberry (another tomato cousin) which is sweet and can be eaten out of hand unlike Garden Huckleberry but I know there are some who aren't fans of this fruit either. Well were on the subject, I like eggplant. Doesn't everyone?*

Todays tomatoes lining up for the cutting board.

That's a small list of the harvests this week which included herbs, summer squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, greens, and much more. What I'm really looking forward to is the first of the melons! I have hopes for next Monday.

For the interested, the weed perennial Clammy groundcherry. The berries are not ripe yet but this originated from Yuko's Open Pollinated Seed and she tells me they taste yummy. They will cover the ground rather like Chinese Lanterns and also like them, the Colorado Potato Beetle seem to prefer them so might be a useful trap crop.

* Okay so not everyone likes eggplant. I figure it's because they haven't had it lightly battered and fried until it turns creamy inside and crispy outside. So good.

Time to get seedy!!

2011-08-05T09:16:00.000-07:00

A bunch of Brassica napa seeds.

I've up to my armpits in Brassicaceae seeds such as rattail and daikon radish, as well as Michihili Chinese Cabbage (or that's what my tattered memory tells me it is), Red Ursa kale and however much mustard seed I'd like to collect which is none unless I get a request. I'm letting this generation create a dense, edible dirt cover for early spring next year, and hopefully a semi-feral population after that.

I've made many a post on collecting seeds of this most delicious family so I won't repeat myself (this time) but here is a pictorial of how we threshed a large amount of Chinese Cabbage Michihili.

Possibly way more than you want to know about brassica seed saving

My eldest demonstrating with very serious face how she walks the chaff off the seed.

To date, I've collected:

Michihili (I think) Chinese Cabbage*
Daikon and Rattail radish (these might have crossed)*
Unnamed Ground Cherry*
Red Streaks Mustard*
Sunberry
Chickpeas, mixed
Beans, many kinds
Peas, many kinds
Buckwheat, scant

The beautiful but leathally spined Milk Thistle's seeds.

Coriander*
Some Dill
Milk Thistle*
Edible Chrysanthemum

Double somniferum poppy*
Asian Poppy
Flander's Poppy
Blanket Flower*

If they have a star, then they will be appearing on the trade list soon.

... TBC ... When I finish cooking a couple lasagnas and make a fesh salad for the visiting Fam.

Harvest Never Stops Monday

2011-08-01T08:26:00.000-07:00

About half the onions braided in sister-in-laws hand - Hi!

Summer and vegetable production is in full swing. Alongside visiting with my family who are here for a month, volunteering for Canadian Organic Growers (visit them :) and trying to get the gardens here into shape, I'm also harvesting. It is the time of year that it might be faster to tell you what I'm not harvesting than the reverse but here goes in bad poem format:

Various tomatoes - lots of blossom end rot on some - grrr - with ground cherries and some sunberries.

When summer sun starts to shine
On greens I do dine
Waiting for the first taste
Of fresh tomato paste
Eggplants, peppers and zuchini
Make a lovely sauce for fetuccini
Not outdone by the berries
Blueberries, raspberries and strawberries
Did I forget the currants?
Or the beans and peas in torrents?
How about all those crops of cole?
Broccoli and cabbage on a roll
Garlic, onion and carrot
Gosh I have a healthy diet
Squash and cantaloupe are almost done
I know I am forgetting some
Like the weeds that grow just as fast
But soon summer will be past

Did you get all that?

My mouth waters ever time I see this melon.

***

In other news, per suggestion of a friend, I have been thinking of turning my twitter account into a nagging garden Aunt alert so if you wish me to nag you about what to plant when, let me know.

P.S. Plant some more lettuce would you!

P.S.S. Upcoming blog posts: more weird veggies, my acreage under construction and lots of brassica seed threshing.

Daikon radish, rattail radish and chinese cabbage are among the many brassica seeds that are currently in the drying shed.

While I'm away...

2011-07-13T15:55:00.000-07:00

...have some broccoli

The variety is nutri-bud

My youngest couldn't wait.

There's nothing like homegrown brocco-buds

More on growing broccoli, cabbage, cauliflor and other favs

See you soon!

Harvesting the Garlic Monday

2011-07-04T10:15:00.000-07:00

Approximately 170 bulbs of Music.

I've harvested our main eating garlic that was being unduly harassed by leek moth a few weeks early. Hopefully, I hit the right balance between maturity and lack of pest induced bulb damage for good storage. The above garlic was all from a local, nursery source of the variety Music. I also have a mixed variety patch of planting garlic that came from my old garden. I've been selecting them for a couple of years and they seem much healthier so they'll stay in the ground for now. Among the adapative pressures was leek moth which might be the reason.

Even kids love garlic - youngest hugging harvest.

You can exclude leek moth by using row covers. I've noticed that plants growing in areas that are overgrown with other plants (yes, I mean weeds) suffer less damage so interplanting might be an interesting strategy to explore.

How to Grow Garlic Easy Style

Seed Garlic - Source Locally

This is the time of year to start thinking about your glorious garlic harvest next year. Keep an eye peeled for local garlic festivals. Most market gardeners have copped on to the fact that people buy to plant as well as eat so sell bags of seed garlic too (yes, it all about packaging). Don't be shy about asking whether your supplier suffers any disease or pest issues in their fields. I am pretty sure I first got leek moth from a supply of planting garlic. Our mini farm came with it this time. Examine and discard any bulbs with feeding damage or mold issues.

Yaaaaaaank! This is a great crop to grow with kids as it is easy to plant, grows without too much problem and is pretty easy to harvest. Some kids might enjoy fresh garlic bread afterward too or just the bread... but at least they will get some joy out of harvesting even if they dont' want to eat it on purpose.

Around These Parts, Plant in the Fall

Plant out seed garlic around the same time you plant spring bulbs for the best yield around here. Just like other 'root' crops, they'll grow best in lighter soils but garlic is pretty adaptable. Any normal veggie garden soil will do. You can also plant out those little bulbils that develop on the end of the flowering stalks called scapes but they'll take a few years before producing anything sizeable.

I space each garlic clove with centres about 4-6 inches apart, several inches deep. They'll put down roots in the fall and be up first thing in the spring, often before the snow has completely melted.

Works well in a permenantly mulched bed

I've never had to water or feed garlic but ammending the bed with compost, green manure or the like and watering when needed along with mulching to hold in fertility might give you prize winning bulbs. So far, I've been happy with yields without much fuss other than mulching to keep out the weeds. This is one veggie that works well in a lasagna / continutallly mulched beds.

Depending on what ails alliums in your area, you may need to watch for fungal diseases, viruses or pests like the aforementioned leek moth. I like to examine plants for feeding tunnels and then squish any cocoons and larvae I find. If you enjoy scary stories then check out the OMAFRA link to garlic growing with its usual list of problems.

Eat the scapes as an early garlic treat

You don't have to snap off the scapes but it helps to redivert energy into bulb formation. They also taste great in pesto, fried in butter, pickled or just raw cut in salad if you like the sharp garlic taste. You could leave them on to harvest the baby bulbils that form on top. Some people even use these to sprout in the winter as well as to increase planting stock.

Tada! I love taking pictures of veggies in my kids hands. It's all about scale.

You can braid softneck types but around here, we normally grow hardnecks. The difference is obvious if you've ever grown garlic. Hardnecks have a hard neck. Besides, I like to flame the foliage to get rid of any leek moth that I may have overlooked and to help control disease. You could try hot composting in a sealed plastic bag or in an active compost pile or discard.

Kids cleaning up the garlic. They had this whole storyline about hair cutting and skin cleaning going on as they worked. We did have 170 bulbs so after the first five minutes, the excitement of just staring at garlic wore off.

Store garlic in a dry, airy place to scare away vampires and improve longevity.

The garlic needs to be cured which just means dried for a couple days before storage. This is best done in a dry, airy local. Afterwards, store as you would normally garlic. I tend to peel off the outer layer to reveal a clean bulb beneath but be careful not to take off too much protective skin.
These guys also have instructions for drying garlic which would be great for those damaged bulbs and to extend the time you have homegrown garlic.

If you forget to harvest a bulb, it'll split into a bunch of crowded mini bulbs. You could try to grow some feral garlic though I think they'd suffer from too much competition to perform at their best. You could pull up your second year mini bulbs for replanting in the fall too!

P.S. Elephant garlic is actually a bulbing leek and I imagine that leek moth would LOVE it.

***

More on different varieties of garlic

Boundary Garlic Farm on Growing Garlic - lots of great tips

Garlic Festival in Carp and the rest of the calendar

Harvest Monday - not for chicken hearted

2011-06-27T10:06:00.000-07:00

We'll start with the safe harvests:

Mixed new potatoes, red currants and some delicious white currants.

The girls were helping me do all the harvesting today which consisted of new potatoes (and a couple a bit longer in the tooth), shelling peas, currants, a few cherries and a bunch currant sized wild strawberries.

Colorado Potato Beetle eggs are in orange clusters under the leaves.

There were some Colorado Potato Beetle larvae and eggs but not in plague like proportions. I'd like to thank the predators that were also hanging out on the potato foliage such as daddy longlegs. Ladybugs, ground beetles, lacewings, spined soldier bug, two-spotted stinkbug, parasitic wasps and two fly species also prey on CPB eggs or larvae according to Growing Potatoes Organically by Canadian Organic Growers.

Young larvae of the Colorado Potato Beetle munching away. I take care of them with my crushing fingers.

We also 'harvested' a couple chickens this week. As I have not parted a chicken's life since I was a little girl on a hobby farm back in the day, we did two this week as practice before the girls witnessed the event. However, they did quite happily come out for the processing afterward.

.
.
.
.
.
.

Don't Scroll Down if you aren't a fan of eating meat.
.
.
.
.
.
.

Still here?

My former Non Gardening Partner, now Garden Helper and Poultry Processer.

By the way, the girls named them all. The first two, that are currently sitting in our freezer, were known as Bomb and Plasma.

The kids love the chickens in both forms - pet and plate.

***

Colorado Potato Beetle

Good Video on how to slaughter a chicken.

Pretty Peas

2011-06-20T05:21:00.000-07:00

Landrace shelling peas from Joseph

It's pea time in the garden right now and the vines are full of flowers and pods.

Tendrils in a triangle on golden podded pea.

I have never succeeded in planting enough peas.

Spring Blush pea mingling with a grape vine

Shelling peas are my favourite garden snack...

Purple podded pea Joseph's landrace shellers.

... but I don't turn down edible podded peas for their sweet crunch in salads and stirfries...

Snow Peas have been a major feature in our salads this last week.

...or dry peas made into a hearty soup in cool weather.

The golden pod for contrast.

My variegated pea plants are growing well. These are second generation plants. The mother was a chimera from a group of Lincoln(?) shelling peas that I grew the winter before last for pea sprouts.

Pea plant chimera.

I saved the seeds last year and this year several seedlings are showing variegation.

Flowers of variegated pea are a complimentary white.

Speaking of peas, my chickpeas and peanuts are flowering too, mauve and yellow respectively.

Chickpea starting to bloom.

Lots of Leaves Harvest Monday

2011-06-20T05:03:00.000-07:00

Speckled buttercrunch lettuce.

It's salad time! We've been filling up on lettuce, peas, green onions, arugula, rattail radish pods, garlic scapes, wild greens, orach, magenta spreen, mustards, kale, haskap / honeyberries, even a few ground cherries! Tonnes of herbs too like dill, parsley, lovage, sweet cicely, thyme, sage, oregano, anise hyssop, tarragon and I'm sure I'm forgetting loads.

A nice specimen about a few days before I cut off the centre, leaving the outer leaves.

My favourite early summer salad is to mix lots of bulky mild greens like the goosefoots (magenta spreen, orach, spinach, strawberry spinach, chard, beet greens, regular spinach, lamb's quarters, amaranth), lettuce, or mild tasting brassicas (some mustards, chinese heading cabbages, young kale), or corn salad and mix that with lots of herbs. Delicious.

It regrew a mini head of crisp leaves.

For a spicy, sweet salad with crunch, I also like masses of chopped up edible podded peas mixed with a smaller amount of rattail radish pods. What's your favourite spring salad mix?

Mislabelled Harvest Monday

2011-06-06T04:56:00.001-07:00

When I planted these cabbage in the spring, the label read 'fast growing, green cabbage.' I assumed these were Brassica oleracea or European cabbage so I only have myself (the labeller) to blame when I realized, some time later, that they are Chinese cabbage or Brassica rapa. At any rate, they are still tasty (and green and quick growing and a cabbage). Normally I wouldn't plant these until the fall because of their tendency to bolt before forming large heads. They grew to a descent size before the florets began to show. Besides, mistakes form the basis for 50% of my gardening education. My conclusion, however, remains the same. Growth is better in the fall and clear labelling is a must when seed saving.

Not to worry, there is still lots of long season cabbage growing in the garden that came from well labelled seed.

Edible Gardening Workshop

2011-06-02T08:31:00.001-07:00

Because I love going on and on about edible gardening, I gave a workshop for the Ottawa Homeschoolers. As they gave me the mandate of 'talk about gardening from seed starting to seed saving,' it ended up being borderline for T.M.G.I. or Too Much Gardening Information! So here is a synopsis of my endless stream of words, with links.

Where can I grow edibles?

Do you have clean dirt? No, then you can grow in pots. Otherwise, these are things you do NOT need to grow edibles:

1. Full Sun - Lots of edibles, including traditional vegetables do just fine in 4-6 hours of sun, even in 2-4 hours of sun or dabbled shade. I write lots of about shade crops here.
2. Well drained soil - the soil texture you have will effect how plants grow but choosing wisely will allow you to grow edibles practically anywhere.
* Dry soil - xeriscaping edibles from this blog.
* Wet soil edibles from Plants for a Future
* Mother Earth News on Shade Vegetables

When do you start seeds?

All year round! Other than this link to Seed Starting, An Irreverant Primer where there is lots of info and a link to a spreadsheet created by I Wet My Plants, here are some other things we talked about.

1. Wintersowing - the technique of using crafty mini-greenhouses to start plants outside
2. Half winter sowing or indoor/outdoor growing - fun way to start tomatoes
3. Fall Gardens - why give up on the garden after summer? Grow snow to snow! If you are feeling especially adventurous, season extension in a cold frame may even allow you to harvest most of the year.
4. In situ fall sowing - Lots of hard to germinate plants such as some edibles (sweet cicely, turnip rooted chevril), wildflowers and fruit trees need a period of moist stratification. This can be done inside but is super easy to do by enlisting nature's help. Just sow in fall in a marked bed. Tada! If sowing something tasty to rodents such as fruit pits, you'll want to use small gage chicken wire to exclude them. I use a pot filled with sand that I bury to germinate fruit seeds.
5. ... and not everything is a tomato - How the other vegetables are grown.

Books
The four season harvest (or anything else) by Coleman. Keep in mind that he is an intensive market grower but he has lots to say to the backyard organic veggie gardener too.

What should I grow?

We didn't go into as much detail on this as I would have liked so I will expand. When choosing what vegetables to grow, especially when you have a small plot, there are (at least) three options.

1. Grow vegetables that are easily contaminated by deathicides, are expensive bought and taste significantly better when homegrown. Funnily enough, these are often the same ones as thin skinned fruits meet all three criterea. A good example: raspberries. Tomatoes too are fantastic homegrown.

2. Calorie crops is an option for someone that really wants to grow their own. It focuses on using legumes and easy to thresh grains along with starchy vegetables such as potatoes. Some literature about 'calorie crops' talks about intensive gardening/farming which may or may not be feasible depending on your access to resources. Some techniques also tends to rely on double digging and intensive water use which may be short sighted in the long term.

3. Favor perennials or self sowing annuals whenever possible. Why not try a food forest? This is a technique that combines useful trees, bushes and plants into a layered system. It can be resistant to diseases and pests because of its diverse nature, can be very attractive and has a good productivity when plants are chosen wisely compared to work required after the initial set up.

Books

* Gaia's Garden by Hemenway - intro book to permaculture techniques
* Edible Forest Gardens by Jacke and Toensmeier - never read but looks good
* Perennial Vegables by Toensmeier - fun!
* The New Food Garden by Tozer - excellent!!
* Unusual Fruits for Every Garden by Reich - enlightening.
* HomeGrown Whole Grains by Pitzer - good resource
- how to process Amaranth (for C.)
* The Resilant Gardener by Deppe (about self sustainability and calorie crops. She's a great author and I'm sure it is full of useful information. I have not had the opportunity to read this highly rated book but she's made excellent contributions to gardening literature before so I'm going to recommend it anyway.)
* Culinary Herbs by Small

Sources for Fruit & Nut Trees
- I don't have these down yet in a convenient list so this is my next post, swear.

Websites:

Plants for a Future - perennial edible and useful plant resource, double check info as it is European skewed and remember that there is almost always conflicting info so it's best to get more than one independent source.
Urban Farmer - permaculture design resource

Soil Secrets

Good dirt is a symbiotic creation of numerous organisms including invertebrates, fungi and plants. Without plants, in fact, you would not have the sort of 'soil' that supports the growth of complex systems such as forests. This is why when you expose dirt, you get the germination of weeds. It is not because there is a problem with your soil. It is a function of the metacreature/ecosystem 'soil' to repair the scar that has developed across its surface with more growth. Without a cover of plants or mulch, the humus is exposed to the elements speeding up its breakdown, as well as being subjecting to erosion by soil and water. This is why overtilling degrades the soil. Over digging will also breakup good soil structure that allows for water and root penetration.

Sometimes, such as when starting or improving poor soils, you dig. Some people also insist that they have to expose heavy soils to early spring sunshine or they won't warm sufficiently fast enough for certain crops to grow well. Also, certain difficult weeds need to be removed or smothered if there is any hope of an easy to care for garden. Otherwise, normal digging such as when a plant is removed or tubers are harvested is all the digging that should be required. I also recommend edging gardens to keep out invading sod/grass twice a year.

When starting a garden, it is easiest to use no-dig methods such as Lasagna Gardening or Sheet Mulching or the Stout Method. Raised garden beds to will solve a multitude of problems.

So if you want an easy to care for garden, remember to leave no soil bare for long because nature will fix that problem for you rather quickly by filling in the gaps using its soil seed bank. By the way, you can change the balance of the soil seed bank by allowing desireable plants go to seed. That way, when you disturb the soil, you'll get a high percentage of plants you would like to see growing, along with the weeds. I've seen this develop in my old garden. What a pleasant surprise. Otherwise, mulch and plant. Work with the metacreature: soil.

Weeds

There are lots of reasons to love weeds, especially those that are relatively easily controlled. Beyond keeping the soil covered and protected, they can act to improve it.

1. Green Manure: If you pull weeds before flowering and they aren't the kind that easily reroot or set seed anyhow - such as purslane but then again it is edible - just throw them back on the soil surface. You'll be working with nature by covering the soil but also adding those nutrients back.

2. They provide a habitat for lots of beneficial insects and creatures (along with the occasional pest). Reseacher Hida Manns writes about the benefits of leaving strips of naturally occuring plants between her vegetable rows. She manages these by cutting them back so they don't compete for light with her vegetables. She also uses a version of sheet mulching to build gardens. If you thought the other methods of sheet mulching were easy, you should see what she does. As she said, several of her babies were born at the beginning of the growing season so low care gardens were a priority.

3. Many weeds are edible. Purslane, lamb's quarters, wild amaranth, dandelion etc... are among the most common garden weeds are all edible!

Pests and Diseases

When it comes to having a healthy garden, think good soil (remember the metacreature I'm going to call ploilsant - sounds exotic right?) and diversity. Plant lots of different plants together to break up sight, scent and other signals of pests, rotate where annual plants are grown but keep in mind that diseases sometimes stay in the soil much longer than the often quoted 4 year cycle. Here's more the difficulty of using rotation in a small gardening situation.

Before freaking about a new pest, use the three year rule. First year, identify the pest and do your best to exclude it from your plants or remove it using hand picking. Second year, use the methods of exclusion, inclusion, rotation and removal,* along with observing the pest. If it is still a problem in the third year, strategize about how to live with it. You may need to keep certain weeds or habitats out of your garden which are allowing the pest to overwinter. You may need to use row covers, trap crops or you may choose to stop growing the plant all together in favour of something easier. In a heatlhy, diverse garden, I've noticed, that most pests are not plagues every year but fade in and out depending on conditions.

* Exclusion, inclusion, rotation and removal? Exclude the bug using barriers like cutworm collars and floating row cover, include lots of habitat for beneficials and mix up plants, rotate plant groups including growing types (roots versus heavy feeders for example), and remove pests when you see them.

Links:

Keeping Bugs out or is that in?

Hot Season and Cool Season Crops

Read more about how to heat up your soil to grow sweet potatoes or peppers successfully here. On the other hand, if you can never get a descent broccoli, go here. And lastly, think fall gardening for lots of cool season crops that bolt in the dog days of summer.

Season Extension

Books

Anything by Coleman or other books on 12 month/four season gardening
Sweet Potatoes for the Home Garden by Allan

Seed Saving and Plant Breeding

We didn't manage to go into too much detail on this very interesting subject but to recap, I think everyone should save seeds. It's fun and it's pretty easy! The common obstacles to overcome are knowing what plant you're growing. Does it self fertilize or need others of its kind to make seeds? Does it need bugs to move pollen around or will wind work? Will it cross with another vegetable and do I care? How many plants do I need to produce healthy offspring? Here I go on about seed saving, the rules and breaking them.

Another useful thing about letting plants go to seed, beyond the fact that many volunteer and create semi-feral populations like kale and orach, is that many provide food or habitat for useful insects.

Books:

Seed to Seed by Ashcroft - authorative
How to Breed your own Vegetable Varities by Deppe - great and fun

***

Looking for someone to talk on any of these subjects or on my favourite subject, ornamental edible gardening, feel free to contact me at Ottawa Gardener at live dot com, no spaces.

Morel Harvest Monday

2011-05-23T08:55:00.000-07:00

Okay, I admit, I didn't eat these but they are morels. There were only two so I figured it would be better if they produced some spores so many there'll be more in the future and because I'm a novice muchroom hunter.

These are yellow/pale morels I think.

On the other hand, there were a fair number of false morels in the conifer forest.

Here is a classic looking false morel with its more disordered cap. Not edible

I think it is very easy to tell the difference. Beyond looking like melting brains, false morels are also chambered in cross section rather than hollow.

Found this huge false morel in the conifer forest.

By the way, what every novice mushroom hunter is wearing this season:

It's also giant black mosquito season.

***

North American Mushroom Clubs

Planting Out Considerations

2011-05-12T06:13:00.000-07:00

Someone asked me, "When do you plant out tomatoes?" I answered then I expanded on that answer then I gave that answer some deep thought (or at least deeper than the shallow rut of habit). There are various considerations when deciding when to seed or transplant.

Hardy, woodland Hablitzia handles light frost as a seedling.

Temperature: Probably the best known is the air temperature or whether or not there will be frost. Most seed packets only give instructions in relationship to either first or last frost. This is important because frost tender plants keel over when touched by ice but following the instructions does not necessarily mean that they will thrive.

Soil temperature is also important for the growth of the plant. You may have noticed that some plants just seem to sit there until the temperatures rise and they they burst into growth. Not all soils warm at the same rate in the spring. Heavy clay soils take longer to warm then light sandy soils. Loamy soils hold moisture so I presume they would moderate the temperature. Besides, that crumbly beautiful loam is something to aspire too.

Topography will effect how your soil warms too. Sunny slopes will warm more quickly than those that slope north. The advantage is quicker thaws but the disadvantage is late frosts killing early blossoms so no fruit. Slight variations in landscape can be used to your advantage. Plant water loving, cool weather crops like most brassicas in the little dips and heat loving, dry tolerant plants like sweet potatoes (they'll grow better if not droughted) on the rises.

Buildings, trees and other barriers to wind, sun and rain will also affect whether or not soils are ready to work.

The point? It may be less stressful for certain plants to hold off a week until heavy soils are warmer. Got sandy soil? You could plant earlier but be wary of late frosts.

Give garlic the jumpstart and plant in the fall.

Weather Patterns: Seasonal drought, rainy periods or cylical flooding obviously will effect planting. One Ottawa application is that with the high water table of spring, planting out carrots a few weeks after hard frost but before last frost date gets good germination. In the height of summer, it can be harder to germinate a fall crop of carrots without help - either daily watering or a germination board.

Of course weather patterns on a large scale include seasons. For example, it is a good idea to plant anything that bolts easily in heat like florence fennel, chinese cabbage in mid-late summer so that it matures in the cool weather of fall.

On the small scale, seed just before rain and transplant under cloudy skies. I should make the weather forecast my homepage as it rules my gardening schedule. Seeding=Wet, Weeding=Sun, or S=W, is the formula I use to let nature help. Of course, weeding heavy clay after a few weeks of drought is pretty much hopeless without a pickax. But in moist spring soils or mulched beds, pulling young weeds in the sun and tossing them roots up will kill them quick (the occasional weed like purslane will just set seed anyhow - good thing it's edible).

The Point? Planting out or seeding when you can expect good soil moisture means less work. Also, don't fight the plant. Some like it hot and some do not.

Red cabbage with its cutworm collar. Started in March, set up in April.

Stage of Growth of Seedling: Have some determinate tomatoes that are in bud but stuck in a pot? I understand your desire to plant them out. At a certain stage, seedlings have to have more space or you run the risk of them flowering prematurely or otherwise having their growth checked or roots damaged. Potting them up may be a better alternative to planting out if the weather is not cooperating. I've been stuck on more than one occasion with bulky brassica or towering tomatoes and frost on the forecast. The former can go in the ground as long as the weather system doesn't fall into wintery patterns for too long but the former has to wait under cover.

Overly small plants often don't transplant well either possibly because of an under developed root system even if they would self seed.

The point? It doesn't always pay to seed early though if you do (and I always do for something), then you may need to plant before conditions are ideal. However, sometimes you win the weather jackpot by planting early. The point again? Why not seed twice a week or two apart.

Half winter sown tomato.

Insect and Disease Pressure: This will depend on what's pest-ering you but waiting a couple weeks after the first wave of carrot rust fly have flown through may lower damage. Some people have to get their tomatoes in the ground early to get a harvest before blight arrives. Hopefully your garden is free of anything serious. Other prevention techniques like providing a diverse habitat to beneficials, breaking up the blocks (or not providing an all you can eat buffet of one kind of plant in one area), rotation, and keeping your soil in good health will mean that even though you have the odd disease or pest, they are not a big problem. That said, some pests are a fact of life for some people and even the best management is not enough. You win some and some get eaten.

The point? Think of your pest like the weather and watch its patterns. Use with Exclusion, Intrusion, Removal and Rotation*

Harvest: If you are harvesting a plant all at once rather than hoping to eat it all summer, then you don't have the pressure to get it out as early as possible. Sauce tomatoes, pickles and canning beans could all fit into this category. Determinate or bush varieties work well for this too as they often fruit all at once. Alternatively, if you really, really, really want some greens early in the season, then try overwintering young plants of spinach or kale for early regrowth is the way to go.

So when do I plant out tomatoes?

Not earlier than May 14 and sometimes as late as the first week of June. Depends on the longterm forecast and the size of my plants. I have predominantly sandy soil in the working gardens on a slight western slope.

* Exclusion, Inclusion, Removal and Rotation: The way the bugs and I live with each other. Exclude them using barriers like row covers, cutworm colours and windbreaks. Include lots of plantings for beneficials like insects, birds and toads that predate or parasitize them. Also include plants that break up scent and sight signals of the pest. Remove - hand pick - pests when you see them. You may also want to remove any weeds that could harbour diseases like viruses or fungi or help overwinter pests. I generally don't because I like the diversity but it's an option if you are running out. Rotation is a more complex issue because it is done on a very microscale in most urban settings. More on this topic another day.

Harvesting Recognizable Veggies Monday

2011-05-09T10:51:00.000-07:00

I know you enjoy my foraging in the forest or amoung the weeds, but I'm happy to announce that today two well known veggies are ready for harvest: Asparagus and Rhubarb.

Don't even have time to add a post-harvest picture. I have a circular bed with a diametre of 100feet to finish before the long weekend.

I'd write more about perennial vegetables of which there are thankfully many but I have to garden. For the interested, try:

Plants for a Future - great website, but I double check their zones (always good to triple check)
Perennial Vegetables - book, available at the Ottawa library and website with some useful info.
The New Food Garden by Frank Tozer - a fantastic author that I HIGHLY recommend. This is a book combining small lot farming, permaculture and the pleasure of growing. Filled with information. I quickly tried to find a good, independent review but didn't come up with any in the five seconds that I have so please suggest a link or I'll try to write one soon.

P.S. If I haven't mentioned it recently, Harvest Monday is hosted by Daphne's Dandelions. Head on over to check out some more harvests.

First Year Rosettes = Second Year Seeds

2011-05-04T04:35:00.000-07:00

Red Ursa Kale overwintered from seedling taken from my last place.

As you wander around your spring garden admiring daffodiles and shoots promising to be peony, hosta or daylily, you may also notice that some of your veggies survived. Some of these may be biennials that wait patiently until after the big chill to flower such as kale or beets. They might be perennials that grow fat little rosettes the first year like chicory or even an annual that you seeded late like lettuce. If you have room, let those little guys do what they do best, grow much bigger.

Staying your hand at weeding means that you have given them a chance to seed. If the population is big enough then you'll have a viable seed crop to sow or trade but saving once from a small population may allow you to select for a special characteristic like cold hardiness. Besides, some make great spices like caraway or mustard and delicious sprouts like onion and chard. It is not just you who will enjoy them in their full flowering glory. Many are nectar sources for beneficials that will help keep pests in check.

Sweet Cicely, a perennial member of the carrot family that thrives in dappled shade and tastes great like sugar coated anise from root to seed.

A list of treasures that may be waiting to regrow in your garden:

Alliums (Alliaceae):

Onions - Biennial. Let lots go to flower for good for good seed. Many alliums make yummy sprouts.
Leeks - Also, biennial and produce offsets at the base of the bulb that can be replanted.
Garlic - I always manage to find a few bulbs that I overlooked. Bulbing perennial. Topsetting bulbils can be harvested, and scapes are delicious. Let them grow through the year and you'll get a handfull of mini bulbs for replanting. You can also start garlic from the bulbils though it takes a few years to get full sized bulbs.
Of course, lots of perennials like garlic chives, regular chives, multipliers, shallots and walking onion

Goosefoot (Chenopodiaceae):

Beets & Chard- Biennial, makes nice baby greens or sprouts, huge sprawling seed stalks benefit from caging. They are wind pollinated and will cross with each other. Bientina has overwintered particularly well for me.
Spinach - Sexing is complex apparently so make sure you have a couple dozen will be needed for good seed set. I have so many spinach substitutes in the garden I rarely grow it.
Perennials like Good King Henry, Sorrel and Bloody Dock will be producing crispy greens right now.

Asters (Compositaceae):

Radicchio, Beligium Endive, Sugarloaf Chicory - Perennial, all C. intybus. Tall 'chicory' seedheads. Endive is an annual C. endivia and can cross according to Deppe's book***
Lettuce - Annual, self fertile and inbreeding so technically you only need one for good seed but more is always better. Let the finches distribute the seeds or save.

Cabbage Family (Brassicaceae):

Kale: Various species, including some that cross with Brassica oleracea, such as cabbage, and some are B. napus so will cross with other stuff like oilseed rape! They are reliable biennial returnees, especially the Russo-Siberian types, in my garden often forming a semi-feral population. Edible young seedpods, edible seeds and edible sprouts.
Cabbage, some kinds of broccoli: Even if they look very ragged, wait to see if they perk up or leaf out again. These are outcrossers and are often self incompatible so let as many go to seed as possible. Nice sprouts.
Chinese Greens: Lots of these are brassicas so look up the species to see who they are friendly with if you don't want crosses.
Turnips: Mine always turn to mush but if you got yours to overwinter or are replanting the last of your cold storage roots then like most root crops aim for letting a good dozen go to seed.

Carrot Family (Apiaceae):

Carrots of course: I get about a 50% suvival rate. You can dig these up, taste the end and replant the ones you like the best. Aim for as big a population as possible. Whether or not greens or sprouts are edible seems to depend on who you ask. If it's cottontail then the answer is yes.
Oyster root - Salsify & Scorzonera: Not only do these seem to reliably come back but you can eat the early spring shoots then the immature flowerheads or the flowers (the former purple, the latter yellow). Scorzonera is a perennial whereas salsify is a biennial. I think the sprouts are probably edible as the greens are and this is my rule of thumb but feel free to do this search for me as I've never tried them.
Parsnips: Some people get naturally seeding populations. Afterall, wild parsnip - pretty much the same as the domesticated variety* - is a common roadside weed.**
Parsley: both the root and various leaf varieties are quite hardy.
Need I say perennials again? Sweet Cicely and skirret are examples.

Notes
* A note about biennials. Sometimes they will wait until the third year or even the fourth to flower. Some will flower two years in a row despite the fact that they are supposed to die back after setting seed. Go figure.
**Always be cautious when harvesting carrot family weeds as some, like hemlock, are very deadly and others like giant hog's weed can cause serious burns.
***Carol Deppe's book Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties can answer your pollination questions. Really well written book.

***

Links
The Sprout People: Lots of info in the Sprout School section

Will Work For Food - Art Project

2011-05-02T13:15:00.001-07:00

Thought some of you might find this interesting:

http://willworkforfood-oag.tumblr.com/

Harvest for Stock Monday

2011-05-02T08:01:00.001-07:00

Having just moved means I don't yet have lots of succulent mature perennial shoots but there are a few divisions that I planted last year who are giving up the goods as well as various wild plants. Also, lots of the seeds I scattered last fall have sprouted.

Lovage makes for a great stock plant. I find it a bit strong to use as a vegetable. Also harvesting dandelions, wild leeks, and parsley for a soup base.

Seeing Results: Fall Sowing

Fall Sowing is a natural way to start germinate seeds that require stratification, such as those that originate from temperate zones, are wild flowers or that self sow. After your garden cleanup, just prepare a seed bed, mark it (this is where I fail, though it does strengthen my identification skills) and sow. If you have mature plants already, cut the ripe seeds heads and either toss them where you want the seedlings to come up or crush and sprinkle them on the ground before composting the rest. It's a fast and easy way to get a headstart on the planting season.

Why do I always overseed? This is called hedging your bets and will require thinning. Turnip Rooted Chevril seedlings. Must be fall sown.

Edible Self Sowers:

The following (not an exhaustive list) have worked for me:

Kale
Lettuce
Corn Salad / Mache
Chicory
Orach
Magenta Spreen (aka - giant lamb's quarters)
Dame's Rocket (spring greens are edible)
Salsify
Chard - Bietina/perpetual spinach is the variety I've let self seed
Dill
Bulbing Fennel (regular fennel too I'm sure though I don't grow it)
Parsley
Coriander
Sunflowers - especially perennial kinds
Malvas
Calendula
Borage
Sweet Cicely
Amaranth
Lemon Balm (I like to prevent this as I don't use THAT much)
Chickweed
Violas including sweet violet - a very nice edible this time of year, and Johnny Jump Ups
Garlic and regular chives
Docks and Sorrels
Rocket/Arugula
Purslane - including selected varieties like Golden
Turnip rooted chevril
Mustards

Sweet violets are a great groundcover and have edible leaves in the spring followed by edible flowers. They've grown happily for me in near full shade to near full sun, in various soil conditions.

There are lots more that others have had luck with such as New Zealand Spinach, Celery varieties, more brassicas so have an internet-look at the possibilities for your garden and lots self sow what you like to grow. You'll see that members of the carrot, cabbage, and goosefoot family are very well represented.

I also have various herbs and other vegetables that come back like most of the tomato family relataives - sunberry, tomato, potato, ground cherry - but some people may wish to remove these volunateers if they have disease issues. Vining crops will also often volunteer but as many people grow more than one of the same Species genus (Cucuribit maxima for example), they will result in crosses. Could be fun, and compost squash often grow great.

Many flowers like alyssum and coreopsis also self seed and might be a lovely addition to your sea of self seeded greens as long as you can tell the leaves apart! When managing your self sown border, you can let it have the wild look or selectively thin so that you have patches of the same plant or a few complementary plants. Stripes are nice too. Let the ones at the back develop their seedheads which are often shockingly tall compared to the juvenile leafy rosette. If you include a few taller flowering perennials like echinacea, they'll hide the sometimes unruly looking seed heads of chard and lettuce and prop up the gangly but attractive seedheads of plants like chicory and kale. Some plants, such as mint, you might want to cut back after the bees have their fun but before they set seed. Not only is mint invasive enough as it is but the seedlings are often inferior in taste.

If you have allowed your self sowers to add to the soil seed bank year after year but mulch consistently so that you might see less self sowers, stir up the soil in a patch and see what emerges. Last year, when I removed my vegetable garden and put in a yawn lawn to sell our property, among the grass and clover sprung up a salad bowl of goodness.

***

Wild Garden Seeds (recently Frank Morton was profiled in Mother Earth Magazine) sells a mix of feral edibles called an insectary mix which would be a great semi-wild border that would produce a nice bounty to boot!

Finally Got Electricity Back!

2011-04-30T17:36:00.001-07:00

Oh internet, how I missed you. I"m back to the land of the connected. A wind storm knocked out our power and several trees. I have so much to post about! Wintersown seedlings are almost all sprouted, fall sown seedlings in the ground have sprouted including turnip rooted chevril, sweet cicely, orach, magenta spreen, and so on... Onions, brassicas, and more are in the ground. It's beginning to look a lot like spring!

Harvesting the Wild Monday

2011-04-18T07:46:00.000-07:00

Wandering in our maple bush, hunting for spring flowers, I found the wild version of the stinking rose: Wild Leek - Allium tricoccum. It's protected in some parts of the country as it can take awhile for patches to mature so I harvested judiciously.

Wild leeks are early season risers.

To this, I added some dandelion leaves, daylily and horseradish shoots for a salad.

From left to right: wild leeks, daylily shoots, horseradish shoots and dandelion leaves.

There were lots of other nibbles popping up in the forest. It's a time of year filled with green tonics but be careful to make correct identification as sometimes a rosette by any other name might not be edible.

***

Wild Man Steve Brill on Daylilies

Northern Bushcraft Wild Edibles List

New Urban Garden Blog

2011-04-13T08:04:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to let you know that regular contributor and Ottawa city gardener Steve has a blog: I soiled myself. He's busy turning his yard into an edible oasis in the concrete desert.

Making Maple Syrup by a Novice: Boiling

2011-04-11T10:31:00.001-07:00

We started late, only put in ten taps and had variable weather. The buds on a silver maple broke the day after we finished with temperatures on the rise. Still we collected a fair amount of sap.Friday was a beautiful day to start the fire in the sugar shack.

Getting the fire going.

We inherited a sugar shack with evaporator pans and the whole bit but I have friends who boil theirs outside in a big pot on what is essentially a camp fire, and others who collect small quantities from their urban tree to boil up on the stove top. This does create a lot of sticky steam so not recommended for large amounts. I wonder if anyone has done this on their BBQ/outside cooking station?

Me adding some fresh sap from that day.

I'm no expert. This was my first time but the trick seems to be that you want to boil and boil and boil and boil. Then boil some more until it takes on the quality of hot syrup. If left to cool a bit, it will be thickened and ultra sweet like maple syrup of course. Oh and skim off the scum as you go.

Getting closer. It was this beautiful amber colour forever before it thickened into a deep caramel. We finished boiling inside.

Our haul produced a little more than three litres of syrup which was more than we were expecting. Not that I'm complaining. The syrup was left to cool then strained to remove the sugar sand* that accumulates during the boiling process. Then they were bottled for storage in the fridge. You can also can syrup which is what we would do if we had a larger quantity. Once again: the finished product.

Two litres of the good stuff.

* Apparently these are 'minerals and nutrients' which are filtered out to prevent the syrup from looking cloudy and because they taste like sand. According to one source, this is mostly calcium which seems like something you might want to keep but according to another, sugar sand can concentrate lead so you would want to get rid of this. I would like to look into this further but I have far too much bed digging and planting to do today. Woohoo!

Overwintered Harvest Monday

2011-04-11T10:24:00.000-07:00

Tops and tails of parsley root

Once again, thanks to the previous owners, I got a harvest today of parsley root. It seems that a number of things thought it a tasty treat too but there was enough to share so I plan on cooking it up for dinner tonight accompanied by a side of parsley leaf salad.

Also our first bottle of maple syrup. The harvests are coming in at last!

Doesn't that pinch of hard work always make things taste fabulous? Actually it was quite zen watching the evaporators for a day in the woods while sugaring.

Winner Is... No Snow Day

2011-04-06T09:24:00.000-07:00

This was tricky. I was using my old yard as a gage as it's in town. Some of you *might* have had a complete melt beforehand but I think my old yard was a good middling estimate. Anyhow, looks like Roman's bet of April 6th has it. Please contact me so I can send your choice of book! Oh and happy birthday Roman!

Sweet Harvest Monday

2011-04-04T14:16:00.002-07:00

Is it maple syrup yet? Youngest 'checks' on our first tap.

Having acres and acres of rocky maple bush* is not only pretty in the fall, but it can be productive in the spring. Finally, a first Harvest Monday at my new property. I had hoped to show you a finished bottle of maple syrup but the weather did not cooperate today.

Some of our maple sugar 'bush.'

We started late in the year. The sap has been flowing for some weeks now on and off when the temperature was above freezing. According to our finding of mothes in our buckets, all too soon the season is coming an end. We started with only 10 taps this year though we inherited the equipment to do 4 times that amount, along with a sugar shack. Yay!

The garden partner (he's been promoted**) tapping a tree.

How to Tap a Tree by a novice:

1. Find a suitable tree: sugar maple, black maple are considered very good, other maples follow but you can also tap birch, black walnuts,*** and more I'm sure but the latter few will mean lots more boiling to get some syrup.
2. Drill a slightly uphill hole about 1.5-2 inches deep or stop when you start seeing sap on the sunny side of the tree about drill height.
3. Put in a spile/tap. You can make one with staghorn sumac (thanks Patty for forwarding me this great idea). Hammer it in so that most of the tap is going in to your collection bucket.
4. There are various containers you can use including a milk jug.

By the way, more and more of my city friends are tapping their well developed, beautiful maples or those of obliging neighbours. The room to grow and sunny exposure (relative to most forests) mean that urban maples can be big sap producers!

***

* For some reason, people in the country, call forests: bush. This makes me think of short multi-stemmed hedges instead of the cloud scraping, can't-reach-round-to hug trees found in some 'bushes.'

** He used to be the Non-Gardening Partner but after showing far than the normal interest in growing potatoes and hot peppers then spending weeks in the woods chopping and stacking fallen wood and THEN manning a booth at a seed fair for one of the sellers, I've decided that he deserves recognition for towing the growing line. Oh and he hardly ever complains about me talking plants anymore. Could I have worn him down? Or is growing good food just so much fun you can resist for long?

*** I've heard of other members of the walnut family being tapped as well like butternut. Also there is mention of using hickory though the process is different.

Links

Tapping trees: nice pictures

Info on maple syrup production

Can't hold in the excitement!

2011-04-02T13:21:00.001-07:00

Spring, sweet spring!

Sugary post to follow.

Transplant Thursday

2011-03-31T08:57:00.001-07:00

So most of the transplanting was done Tuesday, I admit but I'm going to be potting up my hot peppers in new containers today so it's T.T.Two. Being unable to find some of my containers since the move, I improvised and made these handy large pots with half a box lined with plastic bags - all recycled! I couldn't resist including garden dino in the picture. She's been living inside this year until we find a suitable place for her outside. My dahlias (hortensis and pinata) are in their new digs, alpine strawberries all planted up with some place new to grow and hablitzias have more space to expand. Unfortunately, one of my cats thought that this was box was a perfect spot for their big derriere and sat in it - grumble, grumble - so two of my hablitizias are convalescing. I hope for a speedy recovery. How not to start seedlings: overcrowded goji seedlings. I also discovered that a pot of very thickly sown mystery plants were goji berries that I didn't think would germinate hence the appearance that I was sprouting them for salad or something. I think I got 200% germination (you never know, maybe they all had double embryos - could happen). So I thinned viciously and now have a sane number of seedlings growing on. Tomato seedlings sprouted. They go outside everyday with a clear cover on if its cold, as long as it's above 0-2C against a south facing wall which increases the temperature. They come in at night. My in/outdoor containers of sauce and keeper tomatoes are sprouting. The sauce tomatoes are Opalka that did fantastically one rainy blight filled year in the northeast, along with some South American Banana sauce tomatoes that I happened to have a pack of. To add to the cold season tomato supplies, there's Winter Keeper that you can store like an apple from Mapple Farms (sweet potato slip supplier and more), Principe Borghese for sun dried tomatoes and A Grappoli d'Inverno for yanking and hanging to dry inside. The branches are to deter the cat's bottom. The big plants are cardoon and the tray is filled with anise hyssop and violas. The latter could really use transplanting. I'm hoping to hold off on the former so it can be transplanted in situ soonish. The kids helped with the transplanting. Who knew you could get dirt EVERYWHERE but on the roots? No, they did a pretty good job and learned a lot. My eldest 7.5 years old now, put dahlia seedlings in little trenches like a trooper. Trick for fast transplanting in trays or outside. I like to make a trench with my hands or space then place seedlings in it then backfill by pushing the dirt back in, instandly righting the plants. Easier than digging individual holes. I do the same thing for bulb transplant, just remember to stagger your transplants if you don't like the regimented appearance.

Eggplants in Ottawa: On your mark...

2011-03-21T07:16:00.000-07:00

Long, asian type eggplant on highly productive plant.

The first year I tried to grow eggplants, they were pathetic. I mean ragged eared, mangy, whining puppy pathetic. I got one fruit out of it but it was whizened, overripe, small and probably bitter though I didn't taste it. What I had done wrong was assume that it would grow with the usual level of neglect I dole upon my plants.

Eggplants in the north are prima donnas.

They need heat! They need sun! They need water! They need nutrients! Provided you choose a short season variety (80 days or under is probably best), start early like tomatoes, and give them what they want, you can get an excellent crop in Ottawa.

This year, I'm growing Applegreen, Slim Jim, something unlabelled which I'm going to name 'Surprise,' and Rima F3 seed produced by in the Toad's Garden blogger in Denmark.

Sun & Heat: If you don't have an area with near full sun then they will struggle but I'm all for experimenting. More sun of course means more heat.

Here is an eggplant seedling that produced beautifully planted in the ground with plastic mulch.

To warm the soil, think raised beds and sandier soil. You can also warm it up by incoporating partially finished compost or by using plastic mulch. Some people grow in pots which is good but make sure you choose a small variety, and use a water rententive 'soil' so they don't dry out easily. Another option, one commonly employed in cool, cloudy, often coastal climes is to grow things like eggplants and melons under glass or in a polytunnel. This will cut down on the amount of solar input but has the added benefit of warming up the air and cutting back on rain splashing foliar diseases. Ottawa normally gets a decent summer so they do well (for me at least) with their heads uncovered as long as the soil is warm. Other ways of increasing heat include planting against a south facing barrier like a wall and slanting the planting beds to the south.

Flowers on a the variety Little Fingers if memory serves

Water & Nutrients: Incorporating some unfinished compost near the planting bed can provide extra water and nutrients. You could bury a plastic jug* with a pinprick hole or use ollas (terra cotta pots)* next to the planting soil to provide a slow but steady supply of water. Every once in a while give them some compost tea instead. I can see this type of watering being of most benefit if you are planting in pots or in very dry conditions.

Okay, so I'll wait while you start your eggplants and we'll do part two in May.

* Pop bottle drip watering in a pot from The Fifth Street Palace Blog
** Ollas - unglazed ceramic pots for watering. The ones traditionally used are shaped like jugs but I've seen people glue two pots together, sealing the bottom drainage hole and using the top (upside down pot) to add water. These are especially useful for drought prone areas. A serious link here from someone whose done their experimentation about DIY ceramic pot watering system. Just one pot method.

Using terra cota pots in a self watering system for starts: seedlings, cuttings.

Other uses for milk jugs

***

Seed Offers

Need some eggplant seed? If you promise to tell me how they do, I have some more Rima F3 seeds produced by a European amateur plant breeder. I'll happily send some along with a few Applegreen while supplies last. Let me know how they do.

I also have some cabbage seed from a cross between San Michele (blush savoy) and Red Rock Mammoth. Both are long season and these are seeds from the Red Rock Mammoth pod parent. It was an uncontrolled breeding meaning that I didn't chaperone them so I don't know if you'll get a plant that is crossed or is just Red Rock Mammoth. Actually 'just' is unfair because, in my garden, it was disease and pest resistent, stored well, tasted great and shrugged off the cold.

For those of you waiting for my excess seeds, I'm nearly finished sorting these out so I"ll drop them off this week sometime. If you want me to add either of the above, let me know.

***

Last Snow Day?

I was starting to think that the two people who bravely guessed late March might be right but now I'm leaning toward early April. At least, I hope it's early April!

The Plants and I had the Best Day!

2011-03-15T13:25:00.000-07:00

Glorious spring sunshine

Some of my babies hanging outdoors. From top to bottom: Rosemary, Bay Laurel, big box of alliums and perennial herbs/edibles including Caucasian Spinach (Hablitzia)*

Sunshine and above zero temperatures made for a great day for the plants and I. Those that are half hardy which was everything, except some long season solanums that I had started, was left outside for a couple hours against the south wall of the house in a little melt hollow on some warm drainage stone. I put a thermometre there and despite the wind being a bit chill, it read over 25C! That location would make a sweet spot for a lean-to greenhouse/solarium... Anyone know of some cheap to build but sturdy building plans that worked for you?

My novice origami skills.

Reverse Engineering Seed Packages

I also got together some of my seed packages to send to those who offered their help in lightening my seed load. My desire to use less plastic and spend less money meant I decided to make some little envelopes with scrap paper. Some of my seed trading friends from Europe send me these cute little packages so I attempted some reverse engineering. After various attempts, I think I got the formula. I really like this design because it is quick, pretty easy to open and close, requires no taping and, most importantly, the seeds stay put.

This appears to be the same design if you would like to try. My only suggestion is to use rectangles to start, instead of squares, by dividing a standard piece of paper into thirds envelope style and then fold that in half so you end up with 6 seed saving pouch pieces.

Tomorrow I'm going to try newspaper seedling pots.

* I'd mentioned Hablitzia tamnoides briefly the other day but it deserves more attention. A perennial, woodland climber and spinach substitute, it is a useful addition to the food forest. Read more in Stephen Barstow's article in the Permaculture Magazine.

No Snow Day - taking bets

2011-03-09T05:20:00.000-08:00

Looking at the apocalyptic pattern of snow/rain/sleet/frogs/ice pellets/fire raining down on us for the next two weeks, it's hard to imagine No Snow Day. We need some sustained above zero/dry/sunny weather without follow up blizzards to melt the frozen land cover.

Normally, and by that I mean 6 out of 7 years, that I have lived in this area, I have had no snow in my garden by April. Really. I'm speaking about the city rather than the outlying areas but they follow shortly afterward. Last year was an anomolously early spring where it felt like Ottawa had been picked up and transported to Windsor but this year the reverse transplantation seems to be in the works. Compared to normal spring (see above for my assessment of normal*), my crystal (snow) ball is telling me that N.S.D. will be sometime in early April this year.

What exactly is No Snow Day? That's when, with the exception of giant parking lot mounds, there is no more snow on the ground. Often we'll get flurries later than that but they're quickly burnt off the ground by the long spring sun. So I'm taking bets.

If you are in the Ottawa area, leave a comment with the day you think that the snow will be gone and if you win, you will get the choice of either a hardcover copy of Rodale Organic Gardening Almanac & Pest-Control Primer, like new (bought second hand) or one of my two copies of Secrets of Plant Propagation, depending on your predilections. Remember, if only you play, you win :)

* I am sure that there was one or many or all springs previous to my moving to Ottawa that fall outside of what I consider normal. I am not disputing this only saying that I have photographic evidence of the last 5 years (on these blogs) and only one had significant snow on the ground in April. If you disagree, that's okay. IF you know better, you should enter the contest cause you'll most likely win! :-D

** Looking forward to more adventures in Rot? The next segment of The Story of Crumbs will be about crumbs (and dryer lint, and vacuum cleaner inards etc...)

Ottawa Seedy Saturday But can you have too many seeds?

2011-03-05T14:42:00.000-08:00

I do it for the kids. Look how happy my youngest is with our plant loot.

After a hectic drive in slushy ice, I (just) made it but I was not there to get seeds. No, I was there to give seeds away. I had a bag full of them! Unfortunately, my busy week had prevented me from organizing them into neat baggies so once again they were hastily filled and labelled behind the trade table. Did I mention I was late?

Thankfully, I Wet My Plants came to the rescue and helped. She's my bestest plant sale buddy as I see her at all the horticultural hot spots. This year I hope to hit her tomato seedling sale in the spring. I did a trade with her of course. How could I resist sweet potato tubers - Georgia Jet - for slip production?

Trade Table contributor and Fellow Garden Blogger: I Wet My Plants

I also met fellow Ottawa gardener and blog reader Steve. Wave! Speaking of old and new faces. Lots of my favourites like Tourne-Sol and Cottage Gardener were there. Waves! New to me was Wildsome Gardens, Wild & Historic Plants & Seeds. She had a nice selection of vegetables along with some wild edibles like Highbush Cranberry and Poppy Mallow. In between all the 'hey how are yas?' and shoulder rubbing in the thick crowd, I did not buy seeds. Sure I looked. Oh yeah, I asked about some varieties. Just cause I'm not touching, doesn't mean I can't look right?

There were people, plants, seeds and soap. More people, chocolate, honey and talks. More and more people... it was well attended.

While I was carousing with plants and people, the NGS (non-gardening spouse)** was with the children in the craft room. As I was standing in the doorway watching their darling heads bent in furious colouring concentration, I looked to the left and then to the right. Before leaving this morning, I had, had a little talk with myself about how I did not need anymore seeds. As I parked, I felt good about lightening my seed load. I had resisted until now but... You know what happened.

Okay, so I did get some seeds, but most of them were from the trade table. Left: bought seeds from Heritage Seed and Produce and tubers from Tourne-Sol. Right: trade table bonanza. Blue ribbon winner for labelling is a tie between 'pole beans' and 'Rumex, perennial.' I can't wait to find out what exactly they are, especially the second one. I am so guilty of this sort of labelling. Also came home with a Canna lily, True Potato Seed (T.P.S.)*** from Russian Blue, and more. Thank you so much fellow gardeners!

P.S. I still have some extras. Take them from me. Take them! If you live in the area, send me your address (email on right) and I'll send you a surprise package of edible plant seeds. I'm not promising you don't have them or even want them but heck they'll be free! Please?

* Tourne-Sol Co-operative Ferme is a seed company, and CSA if you are nearby. They have developed a very neat seed selection called Winter Green which is "a mix of brassicas we've selected for quick regrowth in cold temperatures..." It is also a source for bulk cover crops, Jeruselam Artichokes, chuffa nuts, some modern OP crops such as Banana Legs sauce tomato bred by Tom Wagner and Rainbow Lacinato Kale from Frank Morton, among other interesting plants. I've got a good feeling about these guys.

** Non Gardening Spouse is drifting over to the green and growing side. He even manned a seed booth while the owner stepped out for a moment. I don't know, we might be an all-gardening couple soon.

*** For those curious about True Potato Seed, Extreme Gardener's TPS: Who's Yer Daddy? is an enlightening article.

Seedy Saturday - this Saturday!

2011-03-04T04:49:00.001-08:00

Just a reminder to all of you that Seedy Saturday in Ottawa is this Saturday, March 5 2011 and in Perth on Sunday, March 6, 2011. Please look at Seeds of Diversity Page for all the details.

Last year's Seedy Saturday and shiny new Seedy Sunday.

Somebody doesn't like me

2011-03-03T10:04:00.000-08:00

So this is the second time I have taken down a post. The first time was when someone got annoyed with me about writing about how much I liked lasagna beds as this saw this as a direct attack on something they had written. It's a long story but at the time, I didn't think it was worth it. Now, I have a whole series on it if you want to reach (on the sidebar - no dig gardening).

This is the second time. Someone called me a liar! I was a little aggravated because I had just spent all morning hunting down references to make sure I wasn't being a 'liar.' In order to get my facts right, I deleted several links, including the prediction by The Weather Network for near normal temps but wet weather this spring, thinking it redundant. Despite being told over and over by various sources that we are were headed for a possibly delayed spring, including longer than average periods of cold and wet, I think I was the victim of the Weather News Scare. Most of Ontario, apparently, does not include much of Eastern Ontario so for the time being, we may be spared the cold aspect. Of course the longterm forecast is a carefully calculated statistically educated 'guess.' I am using the word loosely so we will see.

What upset me was that someone chose (without leaving their name) to accuse me of intentionally misleading people. I am not infallible. I do make mistakes though I try hard not too. Not only that, but I was trying to make a cheery post about making the best of what you are given.

Ah well. I tried.

News Stories: Toronto Sun - Cold Spring Ahead for Canadians
CBC reports: Environment Canada Forecasts Colder than Normal Spring
Environment Canada image of 3 month forecast - colder than normal for much of Canada, including Ontario
differs from The Weather Network that predicts near normal for temperatures for much of Canada

Seed Starting - an irreverant primer

2011-02-23T06:15:00.001-08:00

I am going to pause the exposé of rot to write something timely for us gardeners. Just when winter is at its bleakest, we open packages of promise and start to sow. My guide to breaking the rules.

Tomato plant ready for outdoor living.

1. Don't start your plants too EARLY!

No! Stop! Don't plant cucumbers now! It's bad! They might eat your house! Or at least scare the children with their weak, limp tendrils growing cave-light pale on your window sill. It's true, unless I had a fancy greenhouse, I wouldn't start cukes this early. It is way easier to sow in direct in the garden or to start in transplantable containers a couple weeks before setting out. However, I start strawberries in early winter and some plants need months of stratification to break dormancy so I sow them in the fall. This rule is mainly aimed at getting people in short season areas to start their tomatoes in April, or late March at the earliest, rather than in February.

I'll cop to planting tomatoes in February one year. You know, earliest possible last frost date of the beginning of May minus eight weeks gives you March so last week of February sounded reasonable. They did fine. The problem, as I see it, is if you are growing a tomato that tends to crop all at once such as determinates, then you might get a flush of flowers on your root confined seedlings, lowering your yield. There are even tomato varieties that are bred to withstand low indoor light, such as Red Robin, that will hopefully give you fruit in the dead of winter!

So when do I start seed? All year.

2. You MUST have indoor lights!

Indoor lights are good. It's like you have control of your very own sun. To get the maximum satisfaction out of them, I recommend having as many as you can afford in a compact space such as a tower, with the lights on a timer. The often quoted number is of light hours is around 16 but some people have them on round the clock whereas others claim that seedlings need nighttime. There is the question of plants who are sensitive to changes in day length but I'll leave that research for another day. Normally my seedlings get 12 hours because I have two shifts of trays. The lights should be about 2-3 inches above the seedlings.

Wimpy baby plants prefer things moist. I would suggest wick mats or some DIY instant water dispenser but then you might spend less time staring at your seedlings. The best way to avoid problems is early detection so stalk your plants!

You can use actual sun filtered through a window too. Most gardeners will tell you this is not ideal but it does work especially if you have sunny windows that face south(ish). However, I have had success overwintering perennial herbs like rosemary, bay and hot pepper in a north window.

What you really want is to give your seedlings the amount of sun that they have been adapted to thrive in, as soon as possible. When the weather is decent during the day (10C or more) I stick my seedlings along side my winter sown containers. This is just really early hardening off so I start with having them outside for just a little while, building up until the seedlings are hanging out in real sun most of the time. If they are cold hardy, I have probably wintersown them or planted them out already so this is really only for tender bedding plants.

If you have a season extension device like a greenhouse, polytunnel or coldframe then you can put your seedlings out sooner but remember to keep them slighly open on sunny days to avoid frying your plants. Also, outdoor containers will dry out faster than indoor ones.

Wintersown containers revealing seedlings in spring.

Wind is just as much of a shock to tender seedlings as real sun. Their stems were build to withstand the still, indoor air. To make them sturdier, you can set up an oscillating fan nearby or crack a window on nice days to let in the breeze. If my baby seedlings are going outdoors without the shelter of a greenhouse, I usually place them in a box with high sides to protect them from the wind until they have adjusted.

3. But what about the soil and the containers? TOO many choices!

I would suggest starting with the biggest size container that you plan on using for your plants. This will give you a better idea of how much space you need, disturb the roots less and be less work. As for what you use as a container, the world is your oyster as long as the pot has drainage holes (though I have been known to plant indoor seedlings in flats without drainage to keep in moisture longer but these don't go outside in the rain). For plants that resent root disturbance, such as melons, soil blocking, or compostable pots are probably ideal. Tap rooted plants like parsley need deeper pots than those with more lateral root growth like tomatoes. Plastic recyling day is when I get most of my seed starting paraphernalia. The pop bottle is a classic wintersown greenhouse but I also like yoghurt tubs for large seedlings, and fruit boxes to grow flats of seedlings.

As for soil, you could use your own if you are lucky enough to be able to thrust a trowel into it at seed starting time, or you could make a mix or purchase something. I admit to using whatever is available. My outdoor soil is often stickier than the fluffy, soilless stuff from the stores so dries harder. Mixes that are high in organic matter hold their moisture for a long time which is a benefit. I avoid mixes with fertilizers or other chemicals. If you are worried that your soil may contain organisms that might cause die back in your plants, you can cook your soil to sterilize it.

4. Seed starting is too HARD!

Nah. If it was then I would probably have given it up. Seeds are designed to grow so given the right conditions and a little attention from you, they'll do their thing.

Q&A for specific problems

Can't afford lights and don't have a southern window: Wintersow or half outdoor grow! Try it anyhow, you never know, it might work.
Cat eats the seedlings - Grow in a cage.
Seedlings always die off - A solution of hydrogen peroxide, garlic or other antifungal can help. Check the soil for root eating pests, sterilize soil and pots. Watch your watering level.
Seeds don't sprout - Look up the longevity of the seeds, maybe they're old. It's also possible that they require special conditions for germination including cold, heat, scarification (scratching the seed coat) or other pretreatment such as overnight soaking. Err on the side of caution with small seeds and surface sow. Some plants germinate better in light such as lettuce whereas others prefer darkness. Less cultivated varieties, including lots of herbs, often germinate erratically, over a long period of time. Try pre-sprouting to test seed quality or to isolate some seeds for special treatment. Peppers germinate much faster using pre-sprouting in a warm area.
Seedlings always look a bit sickly - If their colour is off then they might be suffering from nutrient deficiences either because their growth medium is lacking or because they are too cold. Correct with some compost tea or by placing somewhere warmer.
Seedlings have long, weak stems - This is usually caused by insufficient light. Try growing in a season extension device part of the day, wintersow, and gradually expose to air currents. When transplanting, some plants can have their stems buried such as tomatoes so they are less likely to flop over.
Plants never give me fruit / don't ripen properly even though I start them early - You might need to look for a short season variety of what you are growing or one that is more adapted to your locale whether that be foggy east coast or the blinding light and tumbling nighttime temperatures on the side of a mountain. Sweet potatoes started from tubers at the store will probably not crop well here but the cultivar Georgia Jet will give a good harvest most years. It is possible that the plant you covet just won't grow well in your climate, or your garden, such as tender biennial red beaded broccolis. I know, I want to grow them too.
But I really just don't want to start my own seeds - There are small growers that will provide veggie starts for you and lots of seeds that do best when planted in situ. Check with local seed suppliers.

My Seed Starting Schedule
- updated - I'll add division schedules at some point.

January

Sow plants that need 10-12 weeks headstart if they are set out before last frost or are erratic germinators. For example, violas
Sow plants that you are tricking into thinking are two years old. Ex. Globe Artichoke.
Wintersow frost hardy plants that prefer stratificaiton.

February

Alliums such as onions and leeks
Plants that need 10-12 weeks headstart but are set out in warm weather
Pre-sprouting hot peppers
Wintersown containers

March

Wintersow plants that don't take full frost
In mid-March, plants that need an 8-10 week headstart
Greens in polytunnel / season extension device
Near the end of the month, plants that need an 6-8 week headstart such as tomatoes, eggplants, sweet peppers, other solanum berries. Sometimes cabbage and broccoli starts as well if need a long season

April

More tomatoes and other plants that need 6 weeks heastart indoors
Cabbage and broccoli starts
Sow peas, radish parsnips in the ground
Cold season greens in polytunnel or in ground if it is warm and dry enough
Leeks and onion transplants in the ground with a row cover if cold
Near the end of the month, start sowing other root crops like carrot, oyster root
Start lettuce and half hardy greens and herbs in the garden.
Plant out 4 week out brassica starts

May

Last frost will be somewhere is somewhere near the beginning of May, watch the weatehr
At the beginning of the month, plant potatoes
Plant more broccoli and cabbage seedlings or seeds
Start long season melons, squash or other heat loving crops that need a month headstart
Direct sow into the garden squash and beans near the end of the month when the soil is warm.
All hot loving herbs and flowers can be sown near the end of the month.
Transplant solanums like peppers, tomato and eggplant into warm soil after last frost.
Can plant a second sowing of greens, or roots for baby vegetable production or succession sowing. I tend to harvest leaves rather than whole plants from greens so don't often do this.
Look for self sown seedlings to thin or transplant
Check your nursery bed for growth

June

Transplant melon, squash and sweet potato starts in warm beds
Start long season crops that will be ready for fall such as Brussel Sprouts.
Sometimes I sow a second crop of beans, summer squash about a month after the first and a second crop of peas.

July

Time to start thinking seriously about the fall garden. Start in a nursery bed or indoors starts of cauliflower, cabbage.
Sow into their final position tap rooted plants for fall harvest like carrots, florence fennel or coriander.

August

Sow quick growing greens in greenhouse or cold tunnel space.
Sow plants that you want to overwinter as seedlings like spinach.
Scatter ripe seeds of self seeders where you want them to grow.

September

Prepare and sow nursery bed in time for fall rains
Scatter seed from self seeders that appreciate stratification.

October - December

Plant garlic and other perennial overwintering onions or tubers like Jeruselum Artichoke.
Make sure all fruit seed and other seed that does best with moist stratification or oscillating temperatures are sown in mice proof containers before hard frost.
Wintersow in a sheltered snowing location that can take or prefer frost.

Self sowng salad ingredients.

Common Veggies & Herbs, tips

Amaranth - Likes heat so start in situ after last frost or give a short headstart. More from Salt Spring Seeds about Amaranth and Quinoa
Basil - Needs heat and warmth to grow well. Start early only if you can provide these two requirements otherwise start using the half outdoor method or in situ. They grow well from seed planted in warm soil.
Beans - They do not tolerate frost. Plant after soil is warm and after last frost. For staggered harvest, try some early bush types along with some pole beans.
Cabbage - There are short and long season varieties. I find that this technique works best for me. Can either be sown direct into the garden or started as transplants. They grow and head well in cooler weather.
Carrots - Can be planted anytime that the soil is moist and there is no hard frost but ensure that you have enough growing time for them to bulk up. They don't germinate well in the dry soils of summer. I normally start my first crop in late April.
Cauliflower - Best grown as a fall crop here. Start in mid-summer for fall maturation.
Chicory - To get the classic head, these are grown as fall crops but they are perennial so sow and let grow.
Chinese Cabbage - Another veggie that bolts in hot weather. I usually have some that have overwintered and self seed. Another crop best grown to mature in fall or in the polytunnel/coldframe/greenhouse. Coleman's Four Season Garden is a great resource.
Chives, garlic and normal - These are perennials which can be started very early in spring or can be sown direct in the garden. If it can be started outside, I usually do. It's just easier.
Coriander - There are varieties that are grown for seed and some for leaf. Longest leafing plants, for me, were grown in part shade in moist soil. Will bolt in hot weather. Seed every few weeks for a more continuous harvest. Will self seed.
Corn - Plant in situ after last frost.
Dill - Frequent self seeder. Plant at the same time as carrots.
Eggplant - Started around the same time as tomatoes and planted out after last frost. Not a thrifty plant: needs heat, moisture and fertility. Give it your sunniest, warmest position here in the north. It helps to prewarm the bed with clear plastic or incorporate half rotted compost/manure nearby. Variety is imoprtant here too. Choose a short season one. Some of the long asians and applegreen have both cropped well for me.
Fennel - Florence or bulbing fennel is another great candidate for the fall garden so start in summer to mature in the cooler part of the growing season.
Garlic - Plant this after first frost but before ground is frozen. You can grow garlic from the bulblets that develop at the top of the scapes but it will take a couple years for them to bulk up.
Kale - It is quite possible to get a self seeding population of kale around here. Choose a hardy variety and seed two years in a row as they are biennial. The seedlings are normally up and growing by late spring. I would direct sow these.
Lettuce - Succession sow whenever there is no hard frost. Choose varieties that are suited for different times of the year. Often lance leaf open types do better in summer whereas the cripser heads bulk up better in cool weather.

Mustard Greens - Lots of varieties have excellent cold tolerance but bolt quickly in the heat. I let mine go feral and eat when available in the spring and fall.
Melon - Will not take any frost. Choose short season varieties and put into prewarmed beds with either manure or plastic (see Eggplants). You could capture even more heat by building a frame that angles south for the vines to scramble over. These can be prestarted in transplantable pots several weeks to a month before setting out.

Oyster Root - Salsify is the biennial and Scorzonera (I recommend) is the perennial with edible root/leaves. Sow at the same time as carrots.
Orach - These should be self sowing in your garden given half the chance. Start in warm, wet spring. Can also be fall sown.
Onion - Start in February, transplant out to the garden after hard frosts. I usually put mine out sometime in April.
Peas - I plant as soon as the ground can be worked but I've been chastised by growers in climates with heavy, wet soil saying that their peas would rot if planted too early in spring so use your conditions as a gage. Plant when the soil is 'workable.' Plants grow best in cool weather. I often grow a fall crop mostly for the edible green shoots.
Parsley - Some people suggest presoaking to speed up germination which can be slow and erratic. You can start this one inside but it grows well when sown in situ in spring. To be honest, I've only started this plant a couple of times as it was a very good self seeder for me.
Parsnips - I love parsnips so much. I plant these as soon as the ground can be worked in the spring.
Peppers, hot - I presprout these in February and grow under lights in a warm place. Plant out after last frost.
Peppers, sweet - Presprout and grow in March with Eggplants.
Potatoes - I'm a novice with True Potato Seed (TPS) Here's someone who knows more. Tubers can be planted a week or so before last frost.
Potato Onions, Walking/Topsetting Onions - If it can overwinter in the ground, plant in early fall.
Radish - I always forget about this veggie as I'm not a fan but I do sprinkle them around the early spring garden.
Spinach - Cold season crop great for fall, spring or polytunnel gardens. Direct sow.
Squash - Choose a shorter season variety though with about 120 frost free days, we have lots of choice. These are planted after last frost in warm soil. You can use transplants as in melons.
Sweet Potatoes - Grown normally from slips produced by the tubers, they should be planted in the warmest, sunniest part of the garden. See Eggplant.
Swiss Chard - I half outdoor grow these or start in situ in late spring.
Tomatoes - Start about 6-8 weeks before last frost which is the end of March/April. Stems can be partially buried if you have a floppy plant, set deep or plant diagonally. Try wintersowing short season or sauce varieties too.
Watermelon - See melon.
Other - Want info on a specific odd ball veggie I've mentioned in the past, please email or comment and I'll add it to the list or maybe I'll make another list?

* Half outdoor sow: I set outdoors during the day while warm (usually above 5C if under a ventilated cloche, otherwise when over 10C or so) and inside at night. I start to do this in late March/ early April.

Daphne's Dandelions writes a great post on seed starting

-- edited to add --

I Wet My Plants - Great Kemptville Gardener that I have the pleasure of bumping into during Seedy Days and other garden festivals has put up a couple posts on seed starting including a seed starting calculator.

Sowing Seeds, including difficult plants by JDHudson

Urban Homesteaders Unite

2011-02-21T05:51:00.000-08:00

So apparently, there is this family in the states who, in order to pay their mortgage or some other bill, decided to trademark the terms 'urban homestead' and 'urban homesteading.' Their explanation justifies this by saying that other businesses were co-opting and watering down the term by using it in 'greenwashing' campaigns. Feeling dirty yet? Anyhow, today is a bloggers call to action to write about urban homesteading to let this family know that they cannot own the name of what some are calling a movement.

I have been reluctant to jump into the front seat of this bandwagon not because I disagree. Far from it, I think it's ridiculous to trademark the term urban homestead. The evidence that it is a commonly used expression, and predates them, is clear. My reluctance is to single out this family. It is not their fault that we live in a system which requires us to hold tight to our ideas and other expressions of creativity in order to make cash to feed our families or send them to higher education or whatever. (I am not apologizing for them. It was their choice to do the very thing they said they were protecting themselves from). There have been times that even I have held back giving out the info goods because I require it for a talk or some other project. I hate to do this. It feels far more natural to share than to hold the monopoly on an idea, a technique or a process.

What worries me is that people are merely protesting the fact that they are protecting a commonly used term. I think there is much more to be concerned about here.

This blog has been solicited on more than one occasion to include ads or otherwise sell stuff. I do not work (much - I do some edible landscaping) outside the home so it has been momentarily tempting but it just goes against my ideals. If I were hungrier, my ideals might be less of a priority. So I put the blame on something greater than this internet villian of the week though I also agree that urban homesteading belongs to all of us.

If you are interested learning more, here is the twitter hashtag: #DumptheDervaeses and facebook page for those who are protesting the trademark.

The Story of Crumbs - Part IV - Gross Stuff

2011-02-17T09:23:00.000-08:00

Don't worry, it's just apple juice. I thought it best not to include pictures in this post. (You thought it was beer didn't you...)

We know that if it is organic, it will rot, flowing through the cycle of life begetting life but most of us have a dirty, little secret: we think our own input is disgusting. Pee, poop, blood, body, hair, skin cells and spit cause us to cringe. There is good reason for this, as we are vectors for disease. We have created sanitation systems, hygiene products and burial rituals to limit the risk. Clearly caution is warranted. With that warning out of the way, let's look at the hierarchy of fear regarding the body.

Nails and Hair: These are mostly made of the tough protein keratin. If you have ever observed the decomposition of a dead animal, you will see the hair lasts, along with the bones, for quite some time. The most commonly recommended use of human hair is to scare away pests but its protein origins mean that it is also a good source of nitrogen. I even stumbled on this article in Science Daily: Human Hair Combined With Compost Is Good Fertilizer For Plants.* I wouldn't hesitate to add my family's hair and nail clippings to the pile and add the resultant well finished compost to the garden.

Urine: Also known as liquid gold, it is oft quoted that fresh urine is sterile** except in the case of an infection or, I would argue, after it has touched your flesh when it would be innoculated with the usual skin crawlies. Being high in soluble wastes, which include nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous, many people piss into compost piles to get them cooking. They also dilute it and use it as a fertilizer for plants. In fact, urine use in the garden is so mainstream, even regular papers publish articles on it. Common suggestions include applying it the ground, not the plant, and creating a buffer between last use and harvest if you are eating the plant to avoid transmitting disease. You get answers as to whether you can store urine. I wouldn't use it if you had typhoid fever...

Puke: Yuck! I suppose it probably composts but I draw the line! Okay, I tend to prefer spirals, and zigzags to lines so I'll address it but only for a second. Fresh, it probably can transmit whatever disgusting thing made you eject it in the first place. After some time in the wider ecosystem, it almost certainly is rendered harmless. I don't want to discuss it further.

Blood: Since I hope that most people don't have access to any appreciable amount of person blood, I'll restrict this to a talk to menstrual blood. Like blood meal, it is rich in plant nutrients and people do use it to fertilize plants. Most mentions are about non edibles. Because of the possibility of transmitting blood born diseases, it is probably safest to thoroughly compost this product before use. The Humanure Handbook handles the subject of composting bathroom waste which would include menstrual blood if you had a lady in her fertile years in your residence. Thankfully most of the diseases that freak us out do not last long in the hostile environment outside our cozy bodies. There is a reason that some diseases are only transmitted by intimate contact. Most woman collect their monthlies in non compostable products but biodegradable tampons are available as are alternatives such as washable pads and the menstrual cups. I'll let these people carry on the discussion.

Poop: Known as manure in polite circles, the solid waste of animals is often applied to fields either raw (more likely to cause disease) or after composting (less likely). As humans carry the highest level of human pathogens, it would make sense that it would have a high disease causing potential if not properly handled but that is not to say you should be poo phobic. Our current sewage system is all about waste: wasting water, electricity, work and so on. Historically (and presently), in many areas, its value as a soil builder is recognized. Just like with animal manure, it is applied raw or after composting and just like with animal manure, applying it raw has a higher risk. Composting toilets are a viable alternative to conventional sewage treatment. You can also do the composting yourself. I refer you again to the Humanure Handbook (Yes I like this book. It's an enlightening read).

Body: When it comes time to rejoin the earth, instead of being cremated or buried in a conventional casket, it is now possible to get a compostable coffin for your green funeral. As the subject of our own demise opens a whole other can of phobia worms, outside of my gardening jurisdiction, I"ll refer you to Natural and Green Burial page of the Pagan Pastoral Outreach site, with Ontario specific links.

The Story of Crumbs

Part I - Baby Flies
Part II - How to Guide (to Composting)
Part III - Will it Rot the Right Way?

-&-

* Original Article
** Even Wiki agrees (Wiki being the ultimate 'they' so they say it and if they are currently in consensus about it and I occupy the territory of they for others then I suppose they are probably right.)

Pee Facts: a website expouses its use as a fertilizer (always guard against the copy crazies and internet experts by cross checking facts and looking for not only the original source but it's validity)

Not exactly related but for the womb blood curious, a link to the Museum of Menstruation.

Night Soil - Wiki writers paint a unpretty picture

Happy Heart Day

2011-02-14T07:01:00.000-08:00

I did not grow this potato but I love it nonetheless.

Love --> Little Ones

I am a seed maniac which leads to seedlings and then, all going well, to plants. Now that I have an acre plus clearing to fill with greenery, I have been seed starting mad. There will be two shifts under the lights soon and the southern windows are getting full. But heck I'm having fun. There are lots of perennial herbs, alpine strawberries, and onions crowding for space. Lots more seeds are stratifying and even more seeds waiting to be sown. It's going to be a crazy year!

Some onion seedlings crowding their container.

For those of you in need of seed, Seedy Saturday in Ottawa is being held at the Ron Kolbus Lakeside Centre on March 5th between 10am and 3pm. I plan on being at the trade table with all my extras. Hope to see you there!

P.S. I didn't forget. The next installment of composting will be out next week for those that were waiting to read more about rot.
P.P.S Does anyone know this blogger error? bX-y67gro

The Tyranny of the Tomatoa gardening paradigm exposed

2011-02-08T07:29:00.000-08:00

Everyone around me is falling like melting icicles in the high February sun to the winter blues so I thought I'd write a Tomato Tuesday post.

When it comes to vegetable gardening, few plants are as seductive as the tomato. We've all heard the stories of converts who out of wimsy decided to pick up a six pack of slicer seedlings or grabbed a patio pot of cherries and exclaimed several harvests later that 'those were the best tomatoes I'd ever had! I'll never eat store brought again!" Once the novice gardener has tasted the sun ripened tomato, they begin to wonder what other flavour surprises are waiting in home grown vegetables. So it begins, a lifetime love affair with edible gardening. If you are near the start of your journey, let me tell you something you probably already knew.

Bowl of garden grown globes of goodness.

Not everything grows like a tomato. Here is an elaboration:

1. Seed Starting:

Tomatoes are started indoors, under lights, 6-8 weeks before last frost or around the beginning of April here.

Other plants need to be started anywhere from autumn for stratification (chilling period) to 10-12 weeks before last frost to the middle of summer. In fact, I am sowing seeds every month of the year. Seed packets should give you an idea of when to start them but be aware that occasionally it will say something like 4-6 weeks before setting out which may not correspond with the frost date. In other words, you might be setting out those plants before frost or a few weeks after. Violas, onions and strawberries are just a few plants that need a much earlier start.

Stores: Seeds are often not available until February. Some varieties are then sold out by mid summer. This is part of the reason I get most of my seed by trade or mail order so I can start it at the right time under the right conditions.

2. Growing Seedlings:

Tomato seeds should be surface sown or lightly buried and kept moist and warm until germination. The seedlings emerge quickly, around the same time. Keep them under strong light either in a southern window, or better yet, under plant lights.

The rule of thumb is that small seeds should not be buried much if at all. The larger the seed, the more you can poke it into the soil but the requirements for germination will vary. Some special germination requirements may include: Light, dark, cold, heat, oscillating temperatures, scarification (scratching the seed coat), fire, etc... Keeping the soil warm will prevent germination of some plants.

Seedlings of many herbs and most wild plants will emerge over several weeks not all at the same time. Parsley is notorious for taking ages to germinate. There are some plants that need to be kept in the nursery bed for years before they will finally show their green heads.

Also, it is unnecessary to start most vegetables inside. Legumes, greens and vining crops can all be started in the ground. I start only very early cropping brassicas, solanums (peppers, tomatoes etc...), celeriac and the odd veggie or new perennial that I am trying to establish.

Stores: Try and get a descent sized amount of soilless mix in January. I was told these aren't available until April in most places. Plan accordingly.

3. Growing Season

As tomatoes are a frost tender perennial, they must be planted after danger of last frost. If there is a surprise cold spell, they should be covered. The first frost in fall will usually finish them off. This gives you a growing season from frost to frost or in Ottawa about 120 days.

However, other plants, such as peas and parsnips, should be planted as soon as the ground can be worked in the spring. Some will bolt in hot weather so are sown to mature in the cooler weather of spring and fall such as cauliflower, and many greens. This changes the growing season from snow to snow or from April to November, about 240 days. If you have a polytunnel or coldframe, you can add another two months to that.

Stores: The box stores usually provide all their veggie starts at the same time even if some should have been planted a few weeks ago and if other should not yet be planted for another few weeks.

4. Growing Location

Tomato plants need prime real estate in at least 6 hours of sun per day, in a warm, sheltered spot with medium moisture. Actually, tomatoes can be grown in more droughted situations if warm, moist ground is mulched and they are left to sprawl.

The truth is that there is not a corner of the garden that can't grow edibles with the possible exception of a concrete driveway though I've seen some pretty tenacious dandelions make their homes in the smallest crevices. Lots of vegetables will grow in part or dappled shade, a typical situation in an urban lot. Think greens and understory plants for the most success. You can even try mushrooms in deep shade. Equally, lots of herbs are adapted to dry, hot gardens. Even a wet spot or pond will supply food. If you are lucky enough to have a bunch of cattails growing in clean water, then you have easy access to an important wild edible.

Store: It's hard to find some of the coolest edibles, especially perennial ones.

5. Saving Seeds

Tomato fruits should be gathered when ripe. The seed needs to be cleaned by fermination or a weak bleach solution and then dried very well before storing and labelling. Though you can save from one plant, it is better to save from several of the same variety to preserve genetic diversity.

With the exception of labelling, not all seeds will require the same treatment. Many wild plants with short viability will do better if moist packed or sown immediately. Also, there are different techniques for excluding pests during storage. Weavils can be dealt with by freezing very dry seed for several days.

Also because plants have evolved strategies for dispersing seed such as exploding them out of their pods like Impatiens, we have to diligent about collecting before all the seed has escaped. I know my magenta spreen is ripe when I see the birds pecking at it.

Tomatoes are inbreeders and with the exception of a few oddballs such as currant tomatoes, double flowers and some heritage types, will not cross so your seed will be true.

Other plants can be inbreeders or outbreeders or self incompatible or only have one sex per plant so they require larger populations to produce good seed. Some might produce true seed in one area but not in another because of insect activity. Always err on the side of more plants when saving seed and embrace diversity if you don't want to actively exclude pollen from a different variety.

Also, some plants can only be propogated vegetatively as they don't produce seed or produce seedlings that are very different and perhaps less desirable than their parents. Egyptian onion is propagated by topsets rather than seeds. Many fruits trees are grafted. The top is a desired variety and the rootstock is chosen for its own special characteristics such as being dwarf, hardy or disease resistant. This doesn't mean that you can't grow fruit from seed just that each time will be a surprise. Depending on the fruit type or seed source, it might be quite like the parent or very different.

6. Garden Cleanup

To prevent disease, remove all tomato vines and dropped fruit in the fall. Ruthlessly cull all volunteers in the spring too.

I do know gardeners who let some of their tomato volunteers live (haven't we all just once?). I suppose it would depend on the level of disease you had. Rather than rip out all the plants in the fall, most healthy debris can be left to protect the ground and spread their seeds for next year. You can incorporate it into the soil next year if this is your inclination, plant into it, or topdress with a soil/compost to start beds for small seed that would not be able to struggle through the debris. Leaving some lettuce 'trees' to spread around their seeds gives you a head start on the green season.

7. Edible Gardening

Free from the tyranny of the tomato growing paradigm, you can grow sun phobic, bog friendly, perennial edibles. Start seed in November! Eat weeds! The edible gardening horizon is wide. But don't forget to grow lots of tomatoes too.

Remember this? For those that don't live around here, this is a photo from the Great Snow Year not this year.

***

Ottawa Gardener admits that the first year she gardened, she started regular shelling peas indoors in February. How has the tomato paradigm affected your gardening life?

Stored Harvest Monday

2011-01-31T06:20:00.001-08:00

I was very excited because I was cooking up some delicious winter squash lasagna - recipe inspired by a picture in Mother Earth News - with a butternut that had been grown on this land though not by me. This meant that I had something to post for Harvest Monday, hosted by Daphne's Dandelions...

This is one of those four element meals where everything happens at once.

... BUT we must have been very hungry and the lasagna looked so delicious that I forgot to take a picture of the finished product until... well... it was finished.

A dirty tray where once lasagna lay.

At this point, in the blog post, you'll probably be looking for a recipe but I'm not one of those cooks. Most of the time, I just wing it (Of course, with gardening I am a rigorous researcher and executor of orthodoxy. Really). So for those that will leave unsatisfied otherwise here is what I did:

Element 1: Boil thinly sliced rounds of butternut or other neck pumpkin
Element 2: Boil lasagna until al dente
Element 3: Fry onions
Element 4: Make a thick roux (equal portions of flour and butter) with milk, seasoned with salt and curry powder. Melt in a generous amount of cheddar cheese.

Layer with lasagna then pumpkin, onions and roux. Do it again. Top with a final layer of pasta covered by grated cheddar cheese. Put in the oven at a highish temperature and cook until everything looks melty and yummy. I recommend cooking covered for the first half of the time so that the top layer doesn't get too crispy or burnt.

Try to get that f#$%rst piece out. Pair with a salad from your polytunnel. Serves however many people you cook for though portion size will vary.

***

Admin stuff: For some reason, I can't change the design elements of my blog so note that Jeruselum Artichokes are no longer available.

Waste Not, Want Not - The Story of Crumbs - Part IIIWill it Rot the Right Way?

2011-01-25T19:16:00.000-08:00

Why the coat oil? Do you have something non compostable to hide?

Let's just jump in and grab this bull by the horns and then attempt to toss it in the compost pile. Wait that's against the cardinal rule of composting: No animal parts and by that we mean no milk, meat, or oil.

Otherwise, you could risk attracting pests, introducing disease or just smelling up the place.

I've never been very comfortable with this rule. Afterall, life is starting and ending in my yard all the time from the tiny microbes to the more visible vertebrates. Languishing in corners are the carcasses of bird and rodent. These have only caused a temporary smell and no one has mentioned that I should treat them as hazzardous waste. However, they are not in my compost pile and I have yet to introduce road kill into my corn patch so let's disect the problem and see what parts of it should induce panic and which parts can safely turn into humus.

The problem: pests, disease, oil and bones.

Many sources will say that you can get away with adding some dairy and a few will even allow a bit of meat such as the odd dead mouse (really) or flecks of oil assuming you bury it in the hot part of your pile.

Seen from a digestable perspective, the problem with meat and milk is the oils contained. Oil is both hydrophobic (scared of water - watch oil run screaming when you add water) and smothering, excluding two important components for aerobic (with oxygen) composting. Adding great dollops of lard or vats of olive oil is therefore not a good idea but a hot compost pile should have no problem consuming the left over roast duck in orange sauce or that yoghurt forgotten in the back of the fridge as long as carbon to nitrogen ratios are respected.

Disease organisms, for the most part, won't stand a chance in the inferno of hungry organisms and heat, but life is tenacious so I won't make a blanket statement that everything pathogenic will be eliminated. This is also true for plant diseases.(1) For more on this subject, I highly recommend reading the Humanure Handbook.(2) Some diseases, not only require direct host to host transmission but they only survive a narrow range of pH, temperature and moisture. Some, do not. If your beef could have prion disease, for example, I wouldn't compost it. I also wouldn't eat it. Not a bad idea to wash off some of that dirt from your carrot before chowing down too. (Kids did you here that?)

The aroma of free food will attract scavengers. It doesn't matter if it is a rotting apple or a left over t-bone steak. There are enough omnivorous pests that I would argue any decaying food can get the rats, squirrels, ants, racoons, bears, dogs, crows, etc... all excited. I have never had a problem with this in the city. Sure there were squirrels running away with their apple core bounties but I never had my compost strew about. Not everyone has such luck and quite frankily do you want a bear to think of your backyard compost as its fast food rest stop?

Those of us that do have an issue with truly ~~scary~~ magnificent animals visiting their piles may want to use other forms of human food to soil/plant food conversion.

Covering up the Problem

You may have seen composters on the market that claim that they will allow you to compost anything from dog doo doo(3) to meat. These normally use sealed, anerobic composting. They will contain the guck and the smell (hopefully). Alternatively, if you have just come home from a successful day fishing mackeral and want to have all your friends over for a fry up, you can do some shallow grave composting to cover up the allur of fish heads. A good topdress of dirt will cover some pretty ungodly smells(4). You could build a garden bed by progressively digging and covering an enrichment trench.

In The Complete Compost Gardening Guide by Pleasant and Martin, they take care of the problems of smell and pests by digging a pit with an animal proof lid. Keeps a potentially unsightly pile out of sight too.

Transforming the Problem...

Composting is all about transformation so instead of lamenting that you have to toss away some perfectly good bones, why not make stock. Boiling bones and meat scraps to get the last of the goodness out of them helps kill potentially harmful organisms, gives you a base for delicious meals and reduces the bone of contention (I'm laughing) into a partially demineralized product that you can leave to dry. Crush the brittle remains to make something akin to bonemeal. I've read of people charcoaling then grinding the bones too.

Egg shells can also be saved and broken into smaller pieces that are more evenly spread around the garden. You could also boil these if you were worried about the little bits of raw egg clinging to them and pour them water and all into your pile. I wonder what would happen if you disolved the egg shell in vinegar first then added it?

... a little more radically

Speaking of chemistry experiments, Bokashi is a composting system that can be done inside using any food scraps by fermentation. This is essentially predigestion of your food into something more immediatley useable in the garden.

Indoor worm bins do pretty much the same thing leaving you with a wonderful crumbly soil at the end for soil ammendment or a pot medium for things like seed starting. I was quite surprised to read what people feed their worms since I had been lead to believe that their delicate systems handled only the most strictly orthodox compost ingredients.

On the internet however, there are people who have set the worm bins (which are communities fo various organisms not just red wigglers) the challenge of consuming a steak or a Tim Horton's coffee cup. I guess once you get to be a master worm wrangler, you could easily give them the last crumbs of your pork pie.(5)

A creature that definitely would have no problem with most table scrap are chickens. When I asked the question on my favourite gardening forum - Homegrown Goodness - what people composted and how, many said that they dealt with the issue of oil by adding it to their feed. Heck, you can buy chicken poop 'all natural' fertilizer in the stores. Someone else said the oil just helped their Terra Preta pile burn.

It sounds drastic but burning in areas where it is legal is another way to deal with problematic organic waste. One hunter makes sure that no big creatures raid his compost by cremating left over carcasses. This potash is then sprinkled onto the garden.

So there you go, deal with dairy, meat and oil by: burying, boiling, pre-digestion and burning.

* I would avoid adding diseased plant material into a compost pile, especially a cold one. Instead, it would be better to cook it in a plastic bag, burn it or dispose of it by some other means to avoid spread. In the literature, minor disease issues are often dealt with by clean up, or tilling under the diseased residue.

** Go on, read it, it's all available online, or buy it as a reference. Yes, it talks about poop.

*** Cat waste is spoken about as more of an issue as it carries toxoplasmosis which is harmful to fetuses and people with compromised immune systems. Other carnivorous animal waste can also transmit disease. I'll talk about possible composting methods in another post. To tide you over, Compost Guy gets the link of the day with a third reference to his site on this page.

**** If your slow burn pile has taken on an anerobic odour and the stirring the slurry seems impossible, cap it off with a couple inches of soil. This has worked for me.

***** I know if you look up feeding red worms meat, you will get the endless repeating of the same thing to avoid meat and dairy. The Copy Crazies, hereforth known as C.C. is an issue on the internet. I assure you there are also people who say otherwise such as this amusingly written article at Earth Worms Galore. The problem seems to be more with keeping the bin user friendly rather than the worm ecologies (more than worms will reside in your bin) not actually being able to deal with these byproducts.

Waste Not, Want Not - The Story of Crumbs Part I - baby flies

Waste Not, Want Not - The Story of Crumbs Part II - the how to guide

Now that we covered the easy bits, let's move on to more contraversial waste:

Waste Not Want Not - The Story of Crumbs Part IV - pee, hair and other gross stuff.

Your series is not finished!!and my pepper plant has awesome karma

2011-01-23T10:20:00.000-08:00

It has occurred to me that some of my serial posts have left people hanging so I am going to correct that. I am referring to things like Part III of the No-Dig Gardening 'specific veggies and no dig' never being written. For shame! Speaking of which, I am currently finishing background research for the next post on composting. After this series, I'll be going back in the mists of time (while I wait impatiently for spring) to correct my dangling posts.

Remember the Scotch Bonnet, I've been overwintering? It got aphids again but besides tasting heavenly, it must also be saintly because it is now covered in baby ladybugs. I guess not all those adults I transplanted on were ladies... Bye, bye aphids.

P.S. Some very nice readers have contacted me to say nice things. Thanks guys! It keeps me motivated to realize that my hours of obsessively synthesizing plant related information does not go to waste.

P.S.S. Yes, I have been slow on the posts this month. Another writing project has been gluttonously consuming my time. That and life.

Harvesting from my indoor garden Monday

2011-01-10T03:45:00.000-08:00

As mentioned in my Too Many Seeds post, I started an indoor salad box where I tossed seeds from edible greens to grow a little cut and come again. The peas seem to be very vigorous still so they were the first on the menu: pea shoot omelets. One kid loved it, one kid was suspicious of the colored bits in their egg matrix.

Other things you can shoot this winter:

Allium greens like garlic, onion, green onions
Edible root vegetable tops like beet, turnip, oyster root
Wild roots like chicory, dandelion, burdock.* Grow in darkness if you want a milder tasting shoot. Belgian Endive is a produced by forcing the roots of a cultivated chicory in darkness.
Other vegetables you may have stored with roots such as cabbage, florence fennel and celeriac.

My technique?

I either plant in a light weed free soil mixture or sand that is kept moist. If I want it green, I put it on a sunny windowsill. If it tends to be too bitter to convince my family to eat like dandelions, I force in darkness (though I do manage to get some green dandelion down them too).

* Generally sources mention that burdock greens need to be cooked. I find that scorzonera leaves are better cooked too though they are often mentioned as a salad substitute. My variety is a bit too fuzzy for that.

What to do with too many seeds!

2011-01-05T06:44:00.001-08:00

I have a lot of seeds.

No, really: A. Lot.

Partly because I was moving last year so I couldn't garden as much as usual, partly because I was in collection mode for my new larger digs, partly because I have lots of generous friends, partly because I won't throw out seeds, and mostly because I love gardening.

I can live no longer with so many unsown packages of promise! Thinning has commenced.

Step 1: Really old seed that will probably not pass the germination test is being tossed into my new garden compost pile. Maybe some of it will germinate and if so YAY! If I recognize the seedlings, they will add to the garden with no further effort from me.

Step 2: Anything that is marginal for germination and an edible green is going into my indoor salad bed.

Ancient peas and spinach that might be as old as my youngest child (5) sprouting along with the fitful starts of short lived orach seed.

Step 3: Bags of left over nitrgoen fixers such as lentils, beans and so on (where did these things come from?) and other quick growing bulk plants are going to be sown when appropriate as green maure.

Step 4: Anything that can handle cold stratification (or prefers it) has either been fall sown in the garden or is to be wintersown in containers. I have retained some precious seed for more controlled germination but the rest is OUTSIDE.

The first set of wintersown containers. These are what I like to call deep wintersown. I have other seeds that I'll start later, sometime in February or March.

Step 5: If I don't want it / have extra and it will probably pass a germination test, it is up for trade. Any remainders will appear on the Seedy Saturday trade table or be donated.

Phew done for now. Still too many seeds. Maybe I'll try some weird tomato growing experiments. Can a tomato grow in the shade, on a rock, in a tree, on a boat, with a goat, eating green eggs and ham.

Order will be restored.

Harvest from-under-the-snow Monday

2011-01-03T09:57:00.000-08:00

If it wasn't for the thaw, i'd have nothing (I miss my polytunnel) but we had a few days of mild temperature so I bring you parsley.

That's all (and some stored butternuts).

Waste Not, Want Not - The story of crumbs - Part II

2010-12-27T10:28:00.000-08:00

This imprisoned compost is my part of the Compost in a Box project where I am transforming a field into a garden bed by filling boxes with winter compostable waste set side by side. In the spring, I will layer on some more stuff and plant compost loving plants on top like squsah. I'll keep you updated to see if it works.

Everything you wanted to know about Compost but were afraid to ask*

Ah compost, much like making babies, the science of nourishing soil can be so easy you do it by accident or as difficult as a finely tuned experiment. Essentially compost is the byproduct of the breakdown of organic matter by a host of critters to produce the lightly textured, water retentive plant and soil fortifier that is humus.

My little compost in the city

As I am a busy homeschooling mom who works causally as a landscaper and all around Jill of the garden, I tend to prefer the methods with the least amount of input for the highest quality output which makes me favour lump it and leave it composting techniques. In my urban home, I dumped all vegetable scraps, and safe plant waste into a big enclosed pile at the far corner of my yard. By safe, I mean plant waste that was not diseased, and did not contain other spready seeds, roots or other propagating plant parts. I only had room to hide one pile of rotting vegetation so it was used continually all year round. If the pile started to smell, I would shovel on some dirt or add loosely packed dry material. It (almost) never dries out in our climate so that wasn't a problem. In late fall, I would push aside the uncomposted top layer and shovel out the composted bottom half. Some of it was usually half finished in that there were some recognizable remains. This would be used to topdress intensively cultivated areas, or to level off areas where plants were dug out.

Oak Leaves cuddling up to late fall brassicas.

Fall leaves I would leave where they lay on the gardens and collect up with my lawn mower if they fell on my shrinking lawn. They were then used to mulch my garden bed. This is probably close to the laziest way you can compost with the exception of tossing vegetable scraps out the window into the yard.

Compost In Place

However, even the compost pile is optional. Organic matter can be used to help build new garden beds in the topdressing style made popular by folks such as Patricia Lanza of Lasagna Gardening or her predecessor Ruth Stout's straw heavy 'No work, Garden Book.' Generally these gardens are topped with something that can act as a mulch. I've read of several sources than add continually to the garden by tucking vegetable scraps under the mulch. If you have a light fluffy top layer like straw I could see this working.

The Complete Compost gardening guide by Barbara Pleasant and Deborah L. Martin opens up in situ rotting by describing methods of pit composting. Creating an accessible underground pit solves lots of problems for urban composters such as moderating the temperature and moisture, cutting back on smells, frustrating some pests and hiding the pile from view. They also write about planting around buried compost which acts as a reserve for moisture and nutritients. Concentrating your organic resources is by no means a new idea as putting the good stuff where you want to grow more good stuff is a time honoured tradition. Steve Solomon in his book Gardening When it Counts suggests if you have few resources but a urgent need to convert sod into a garden then dig and bury compostables just where you are going to plant. I have used this technique with success many times when I had plants to put in a new bed that was not yet prepared. Planting in half finished compost is another commonly recommended technique. More than one person has seen the benefit of growing squash or potatoes in the pile by accident.

Finally you can trench compostables by digging them in a 'shallow grave.' Just before moving, the city forgot my overly full green bin so instead of leaving it for the new people to deal with, I just dug it into the ground. Great way of getting rid of smelly waste.

Composting serious style

For some compost is an art. They have three (or more) bins side by side and store browns separately to combine with their greens in just the right balance for problem-free breakdown. Once a pile is built, it must be kept aerated by mixing, tumbling, piping or some other technique and properly watered which may mean exclusion of water as much as it might mean watering the pile. Some of these artists have a hot pile that can make sweet compost in a matter of weeks. It is argued, that to properly kill disease organisms and weed seeds that you want a compost that steams. True, true but if you don't have the energy, time or interest in becoming a dirt artisan, don't despair as cold compost is lovely too. In fact, most humus is produced from mellow rot that isn't so hot. Imagine walking along the forest floor if leaf litter sizzled.

Organic matter is made up of the so called CHON(SP) formula of life: Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen and Nitrogen with lesser amounts of Sulfur, Phosphorous, along with various odds and end atoms. For the purpose of understanding compost, we focus in on carbon and nitrogen at a ratio 30:1 which produces a quick, smell free buffet for aerobic microrganisms and friends. Nitrogen is what proteins are made of so you won't be surprised to hear that it is higher in things like meat, bloodmeal, and fresh greens. However, too much of it can make an ammonia scented, slimy mess. You have to cut it with carbon. As students of organic chemistry and Trekkers will tell you - life on earth is carbon based, and so are the sugars that fuel that life. Here enter the browns such as dried plant matter like straw, fall leaves and tree based materials like sawdust or paper. Being too heavy handed with carbon though can significantly slow down decomposition. Just out of interest, did you know that purslane contains a C:N ratio of 8:1? That's pretty high when you compare it to blood which is 3:1. In contrast, cardboard has a ratio of approximately 450:1.**

If you manage to achieve the golden ratio of 30:1, have adequate aeration and moisture then you could have quite the party of critters squeezing the goodness out of your scraps, along with all the critters consuming them. This will create the kind of heat that causes my friend in Northern Europe to joke about going out on snowy winter evenings to walk barefoot on top of his cozy compost pile.

Much is said about the biological progression from microbes that live in moderate temps to thermophiles that work in the middle of the action to the return of the temperate folk as the pile mellows. You might even hear about the difference between aerobic composting - that's in the prescence of oxygen and generally doesn't smell and anerobic decomposition - think swamp. When oxygen is not available, rot can still go on, but the class of creatures that do the job release stinkier byproducts so most composters avoid this situation. I have encountered an anerobic layer at the bottom of the compost pile which is soggy, slimy and smelly. Oft quoted is the fact that anerobs require less nitrogen to do their buisiness so the qualities of the produced compost is caused by the excess of N.

Anerobic composting generally takes place in sealed compost systems or in still water such as when making compost tea either on purpose or by accident as my mother does whenever her roof collecting water cistern also collects leaves. Great for the plants, she tells me, but smells terrible. By the way, some people will say that proper compost tea is made using aeration and some other stuff like molasses which cuts down on the aroma.

What we don't tend to read too much about are all the other organisms that reside in your pile from invertebrates like millipedes to earthworms, fungi of all sorts, plants that make it through the trial by fire and the odd mammal or two that's usually just passing through. No one wants to pass up on this bonaza.

This brings me back. Here's a picture from my old gardening blog from my old compost bin of old compost that has long since turned into humus.

Feeding the Beast

In order to properly explore what goes into compost, another post is needed but the most conservative rules are: raw vegetable matter that is not diseased, water, air and whatever enters on its own. That's all.

Actually anything that was once alive has a good chance of becoming humus given the right conditions from paper to pee which brings us to Part III - Will it Rot the Right Way?

Part I - Baby flies

***

* It's true, I didn't really answer every question about compost. Perhaps a better title would have been Holy crap, there's a lot written about decay! but it wasn't as catchy.

** Numbers from the Humanure Handbook

*** The middle section feels like it lacks sufficient internet induced referencing. These are when you swipe someone's idea, quote someone or otherwise feel karma compelled to refer to their website/book. In this case, I was mostly dusting off the part of my brain that remembers things but similar information can be found in another good book: The Real Dirt by Mark Cullen and Lorraine Johnson.

***

A lot of other home scale composting styles in no particular order:

Vermicomposting - using worms
1. Manual from the Organic Agricultural Centre of Canada
2. The Worm Factory - local supplier of red wrigglers

Bokashi composting - kind of like sourdough bread but not.
Make your own bokashi starter or Extreme Bokashi

Hugelkultur - wood berms based beds. Lots especially useful if you live in a wooded area with shallow/poor soil. Permaculture Forum talks wood based dirt

Compost Tea - brewing your compost, sometimes tisanes of particular leaf crops are used like comfrey, yarrow or nettle for a nutrient boast or foliar spray. Definitions seem to differ in exactly what should be called compost tea and what should be called stinky greens or smelly brown goo juice. I suppose this is rather like composting itself with the sophisticated aerated, molasses added method and the more basic sticking organic stuff in a bucket of water and straining.

Leaf Mold - What forests (and you can) make.

Harvest Monday - Winter heatwith overwintered peppers

2010-12-27T09:00:00.000-08:00

I have written a tonne on overwintering peppers, so I won't bore you with a recap but here is the latest on my current hot pepper darling.

Scotch bonnet saved from grocery store seed. This is its second winter in the house.

You can see the last year's large, lush leaves are drooping and will probably drop though I am getting a new crop of leaves budding. I harvested most of the rest of the peppers today to pickle and dry.

Yummy but a bit much for one meal - this calls for preserving measures.

Aphids are plaguing this plant as they did last year but this year, I have some volunteers keeping their population down.

Rural properties have a lot of (lady)bugs apparently. Not that I'm complaining.

Happy Shortest Day of the Year!

2010-12-21T14:26:00.000-08:00

May you see more sun in your near future.

My kiddies kicking off winter with a couple containers of wintersown seeds. This technique sure saves on time and space under the lights.

Happy Holidays!

Waste not, Want not - the story of crumbs - prt 1

2010-12-13T08:26:00.000-08:00

Thank you to Colin Purrington on Creative Commons for this lovely shot.

Part 1 - Baby Flies

I have always been an avid composter - the kind that offers to mow neighbours fall lawns if I can take home the rich mix of grass clippings and shredded tree leaves in trade. Despite approving of the city's green waste recycling program, I didn't actually add much to it as I needed my compost for my own garden. That said, as we were preparing the house for moving, I did start to use it so that our composter wouldn't be too full for the new owners. And on several occasions I noticed a mass exodus of adorable fat, baby flies. Apparently, the appearance of these young insects has caused some of my friends to quit the green bin program because they were too grossed out. Signs have gone up around the city of a little child's hands holding some dirt and a seedling to encourage participation.

I think we can all agree that we love the Earth. Right? There are only a few that are craving its wanton destruction, the rest of us have converted to latter day hippies. Who among us has not felt shame when they have to apologetically ask for plastic bags at the checkout counter because they left their reusuable ones at home? Unfortunately, too many of us have been taught to step on ants, and feel faint at the smell of manure. We clutch our hand santizers and avoid thoughts of death.

The thing is that the wonderful biological film covering our planet is a dynamic system with parts growing and others dying and being recycled. We are all part of this green program. The man that eats the steak and defecates what his body does not need. The sewage bacteria that turn this 'waste' into fuel. The fungi that live in symbiosis with the forest and equally consume its dead limbs. The plants that thrive on the lightly textured, water retentive soil rich in humus. The person that eats a salad made from those plants and well...

Insects of all sorts are involved in consumption of dead organic matter - both of the square and round cell type (plant and animal). Of course, we associate maggots with bloated dead bodies which is just freaky so when we see our green bins crawling with fat little grubs, some of us feel a bit woozy. The usual fix is to put your waste meat in the freezer until collection day. However, I have to disappoint people by pointing out that I have seen maggots on entirely vegan fair - my lawn mower blades got clogged with rotting grass and grew a fine crop of baby flies. Fruit fly maggots are just as ~~gross~~ cute but more dimunitive in size. You can guess what they eat. Of course freezing your meat will also mean less smell in the summer - it freezes naturally this time of year. You could even freeze all your compost in those handy little mashed up and dried tree bags that they sell for lining your indoor mini bin OR you can learn to love baby flies.

I might be unpopular here.

But, the visceral reaction to seeing these harbringers of death can be changed into a wonder how Earth herself wastes not. Just keep telling yourself "Awe, baby flies. How sweet. Look at them," as you gag and quickly turn around.

Other methods include:

1. Add dry material
2. Freeze your compost
3. Make your kids empty the compost in the bin
4. Wear rose coloured glasses and sing an earth loving folk song
5. Pressure wash your bin once in a while*

And my no. 1 tip: Ignore them. Really, they will either die of dehydration on your driveway, get eaten by something else or pupate into flies. Assuming you are like most North Americans and have both screened windows and air conditioning, you probably aren't too bothered by flies inside the house. Outside, the sky is big enough to share.

* It won't really help either but your bin will be sparkling for a whole half a day. Cuts down on that hard to scrape crust of goodness too.
** Only 1 picture? Yes, I apologize but I was too captivated by the beauty of nature to remember to take pictures of the maggots that have graced my garden.

***

What other people say:

cbc story about squirmy people and pressure washers
Ottawa Citizen's working mom encounters the adorable fly babies

***

Stay tuned for: Part 2 - Binning the green bin compost style

Welcome Whiteness

2010-12-05T14:21:00.000-08:00

Newsflash: Ottawa Gardener likes snow!

The problem with privacy is you have a looong driveway. The 600ft treed lane that leads to our new rural house.

Around these parts, winter is clearcut: when there is white, there is winter. The white falls, the wind howls and several months pass before the sun rises higher and the freeze is shredded by golden rays creating the rivlets, puddles and streams of the springtime melt. I have lived in climates where winter is dominated by cold, cranky rain or where the minimal snow shifts like sand in the frigid temperatures or where winter never quite takes hold and 20 centimetres of snow is followed by a week above zero. Though we do get our mid-winter thaw, this is really just a little bounce up from the normal minus double digits. It often happens as the path of the sun gets high enough to start the ice sweating even in subzero weather - sometime around winterlude.

A comforter for plants

Though apparently the antithesis of growing, a snow blanketed landscape can also be seen as a comfortable place for plants to wait out the winter. Not only is it stockpiling water (and some nutrients) for the spring soak, but it acts as insulation. Snowflakes jumble together as they fall, leaving spaces which trap insulating air. The windchill might threaten above, but the perennial roots, and dormant seeds, stay cozy beneath.

Overwintering

Hardiness zones are a crude estimate of whether or not a plant can survive in your garden. They are based on the minimum air temperature that a plant can resist before it keels over. However, if you live in a region with reliable snowcover then you might be able to grow more delicate plants than you first thought. I have had various interesting conversations with nursery people about using the snow to extend your zone. The first suggested that hardiness zones were most reliable for woody perennials as they tend to stick up above the snow blanket. Perennials were less predictable. In a well drained spot, you might have all sorts of things growing.

A father of a friend of mine apparently managed to overwinter globe artichokes near Montreal. The region he lived used to get early, consistent, heavy snow fall. This same person moved somewhere with slightly less snow cover and now can't even get parsley to overwinter which amazes me because my parsley seems to be able to withstand sitting in a block of ice. A nursery man, also near Montreal, gets peaches to produce by cutting them close to the ground. This protects the flowerbuds produced on first year wood from the ravages of winter and the fluctuating temperatures of early spring. Various favourite members of the prunus family can be root hardy but suffer from blossom / bud kill in late spring when the temps decide to freefall for a couple of days. This is the reason why some people suggest planting early blooming fruit trees midway on a north facing slopes that warm more slowly in the spring or even planting them on a buried rock.

My own experience is that I have often gotten zone 6 plants to grow well in my urban zone 5a home but not every zone 6 plant will survive. Bronze fennel is a total bust for me but cabbage often overwinters. Of course, whether or not a plant will be vigorous in your garden depends on many factors such as soil type, heat, humidity, rainfall, pH, day length to name a few. Hardy kiwi, often rated to Z. 3 may not fruit because the growing season is not long enough.

The choices would be more limited though if it wasn't for all that shovelling we have to do. So in between the curses as you get on your winter tires, remember to thank the snow.

Harvesting Horseradish Monday

2010-11-22T10:10:00.001-08:00

I have noticed that the prefix horse is often put in front of what people consider coarse vegetables like horseradish, horse chestnut, and horsemint. Or perhaps it refers to a wild plant, found in fields like cow parsley or cow parsnip. Of course, adding field before plants is also common from field bindweed to field horsetail to go full circle.

On first inspection, not very promising - a bed of dead horseradish leaves.

The experts on wiki tell me that:

"Where the English name horseradish comes from is not certain. It may derive by misinterpretation of the German name Meerrettich ("sea radish") as Mährrettich ("mare radish"). Some think it is because of the coarseness of the root. In Europe the common version is that it refers to the old method of processing the root called "hoofing." Horses were used to stamp the root tender before grating it."

It is an exceptionally hardy member of the Brassicacaea family, considered if not invasive, then at least persistant. The roots, early shoots, and seeds can be used according to Plants for a Future. However, they are normally propagated vegetatively so you'll probably have to look elsewhere to seed your mustard mix.

Digging in the soil reveals roots and shoots.

Best known of its traditional uses is when the macerated root is mixed with vinegar to produce the piquant sauce bearing its name. I like horseradish sauce but don't use a whole lot of it so I thought I would follow up on advice given to me in several sources to boil the roots. This destroys the volatile 'mustard' oils producing a rather bland root vegetable. I'll let you know next time what it tasted like.

I love the soft focus of this picture - must have been steam forming on the lens after being outside in the ch-ch-chilly fall.

Despite its invasive nature, I tend to plant it In The Perennial Garden because I like the look of its large, coarse leaves. There is also a variegated variety sometimes available (you'll note most comments on the link are about locating it). These can provide a dramatic contrast with finer textured plants.

Picture of horseradish in flower with daylily in front if I remember correctly from my old garden.

A first Harvest Monday!

2010-11-15T06:31:00.001-08:00

Now that a 50ft tower graces the back of our rural abode, we have internet. So I can bring you harvests. The garden(s) are mostly still about input what with all the bed shaping and seeding for next year's splendor but I have had some outputs.

Massive 3 pie butternuts, organic (spotty) apples, potatoes and a few of the many, many Fatali that the two year old plant produced.

Digging in the old vegetable garden unearthed a good helping of potatoes. And the owners were kind to leave us with a surplus of apples and giant winter squash. I'll cook some of these apples up with Fatali habanero that are finally ripe - not your kid's apple sauce.

Greens in the low, winter sunlight.

Not too much still growing in the garden (we'll change that for next year) but I did harvest some parsley, sorrel, dill and violets for a green sauce.

Okay, break's over, back to work.

In Loving Memory

2010-11-14T17:03:00.000-08:00

To our baby boy that lived for 20 weeks in the womb and forever after in our hearts.

Harvest Monday - Kale, kale and some chard

2010-10-18T07:06:00.001-07:00

Kale with red oak leaves: Red Ursa is a beautiful, dependable, tender and tasty kale, originally from Wild Garden Seeds. I also quite like Dwarf Blue Curled Scotch - a frilly green variety. I don't typically grow taller types like palm/lacinato (B. oleracea) as I imagine they'd be more prone to die back above the snowline though I have not tried them so this is only a guess.

The kale that grows itself in my garden is Red Ursa - Brassica napus. I started these some years back and the winter survivors became the seed parents to a plentiful crop ever after. As vegetables go, and brassicas in particular, it is a easy, versatile plant. Hardy, they provide a three season harvest, even four during the milder winter months. Besides their leaves, you can eat the flowerheads like broccolini, the immature seedpods like rattail radish and the seeds as mustard or sprouted as microgreens.

Like the rest of the vegetable brassica tribe, they are also darn good for you. Doesn't the word kale just reek of nutrition? Doesn't the five year old in year wish for cookies instead?

Actually, I ♥ kale.

Perennial kale variety Daubenton growing near its so-called biennial cousin. This is a huge plant taking up a 3x4x3 foot space approximately in its second year but really can you have too much kale? It's much more strongly flavoured than the other kales I grow in the garden.

Also, it is beautiful in the garden. In the spring, transplant or seed a purple or blue toned variety near your asters or chrysanthemums. When the temperatures dip, they will take on vibrant cool tones that act as a fabulous foil for late season flowers. Their coarse textured leaves contrast nicely with grasses too.

Whattabout the chard? Oh yes, also harvesting greens like docks, chard, onions & roots like Jeruselum Artichokes, crosnes and salsify & various herbs

***

Didn't get your fill of kale? Here's a good article: The Best Kales by Mother Earth News

Tomato seed 'ick

2010-10-12T08:52:00.000-07:00

To borrow a phrase from the youngsters 'That's sick!'

The process of fermentation of tomato seeds leads to a gross slick of mold* on top of the liquid. This is supposed to remove the germination inhibiting gel cap around the seed and eliminate some pathogens. It's cool. It's gross. It's sick - I guess.

When you see free tomato seeds sunk to the bottom of your science experiment and blech on the top, you can rinse your seed, using a bleach wash if you want.

* What the heck is that stuff? Googling reveals that it is known as 'white mold,' 'good mold,' and other descriptive names like 'foamy' mold. Along with the pale mold, I sometimes see a greenish growth like you see on bread. If you know the name of a common mold enlisted in this fermentation process, please let me know.

***

We have been busy beavers around here as in two weeks we will be saying goodbye to one trusty garden friend and restarting operations at our new garden which will hopefully serve our family just as faithfully. In the meantime, I may be a bit slow on the posts.

Another Gardener brought you this Harvest Day

2010-10-05T14:51:00.000-07:00

A day late and not even my harvest but a friend's - Canadamike.

The fall bounty of squash (mostly maximas), tomatoes (some OSU crosses) and canned goodies.

Nevertheless, it is a beautiful gift.